...from the other side ...Ha!!!
I can't even understand what I said in my last post! Can you? Believe me, this is not an inconsistency, this is a serious paradigm shift. I care so little about *the Xanga situation* at the moment that I'm simply *twirling* in place like a breakdancer on the floor!
Yes...I know I see the keyboard...the computer interface....
But, too, I see the words reaching out, the thoughts touching home at who knows when and whereupon a time.
So it is really all about you, whoever you are, wherever you are. I have vanished once again before your eyes met this. I am gone. Sailing yonder.
Rush away you too! You can! It's a safe journey hereafter. You can leave the past--untensed!
Journey well!
Month: March 2001
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The Updside of the Biancas…
Someone has moved the boulder. Bianca has returned as the many-headed Hydra.
The Hydra, in Greek mythology, was a gigantic water serpent with nine heads, one of which was immortal. She was defeated by Herakles who buried the immortal head beneath a boulder.
"[The Hydra] throve on wounds: of all its hundred heads I cut off none but from its neck two more sprang to succeed it, stronger than before! Yes, though it branched with serpents sprung from death, and multiplied on doom, I [Herakles] mastered it, and, mastered, I dispatched it." -Metamorphoses 9.69-74
So we have now Bianca and Bianca_ and Bianca_bianca and what more to stick their necks up soon!
Should we act like Herakles and sever these necks? Drive the monster into the ground and plant it under a boulder again? I say: No!
I write not to attack, but to take note of the spectacle and stay clear of its flagellations...
First: Bianca
Loopdeloup and Pixelpusher have substantiated that Bianca has resumed her recruiting activities here after 2 ½ months cessation.
I was worried when Bianca ceased her recruiting activities on behalf of Xanga. I felt that we all drove her into seclusion, and secretly I hoped that someday she would return as a recruiter. Should we stop scrutinizing her every move? No! Should she stop her recruiting activity? No! Yes, it is a ruse, now uncovered—but, from my vantage, appreciated. As if I were a 14 year-old virgin boy seduced by a beautiful 35 year-old woman under the pretext of love—but really only done for the initiation of sex and naught else—I am chagrinned, but appreciative.
I do, however, think that the manner in which her posts were simply updated by timestamp and weeded of certain eProps and comments is overly deceptive. I believe one of her posts had at least 60 eProps (I think it was the “meaning of names” one which now displays only 37 eProps), so what is the ploy?
To make current and more modest Bianca’s stance?
This weeding and the fairly coincidental disappearance of the “all time” eProps/Comments feature (where you could search for the greatest number of eProps/Comments since Xangan time began—for a further description, see my post here) have something in common: Bianca would have noticeably fallen in rank in the list. And while erasing comments and updating timestamps is possible by us mere mortal Xangans, erasing eProps is a sleight of hand only the Xangods are capable of. So no longer can we point and say: ”Look what has happened!” History is effaced and along with it, Bianca’s historical rankings, and all evidence of manipulation—except for our memory!
But why else, from the Xangods perspective, would they prune her eProps and make unavailable the “all time” eProp feature? So that those who had ranked historically at the top, Jewels with 74, Holly_Green with 70 (yes, I was up there somewhere, too) wouldn’t have grounds to get obsessive and say: “Look, the new wave of recruitees have lavished Bianca glowingly with more eProps than us! She’s now taken the lead--all of our glory effaced by a recruiting tool! Arghhh!”
Not that any of us would—I’ll dare speak for all and say that we would not!
But the Xangods feared this possible ugly head of jealously, so made Bianca more modest and also furthermore incomparable to us. Which might also explain why there are no new Bianca posts, only updated ones. New posts by Bianca that might become lavished with new members' ePropped gratitudes could stand out at the top in the current weekly rankings. Old posts—time updated only—so seemingly current but not, yet available to new members as an outlet for their appreciation and affection—don’t rank. Ah! The Xangods reformed the marketing tool and proactively anticipated possible negative reaction. Bianca is alive (current time stamps) and passively available for praise (necessary for adulating newbies) yet not contesting with the rest of us! Brilliant! It’s brilliant!
What we must keep in perspective, however, is this: While we assume that Bianca is a para-Xanga tool, nobody has hard proof of that! Indeed, Bianca could be just the fantastic creation of a freelancing Xanga-loving blogger entirely unrelated to the Xangan management (except for her ability to erase eProps). That isn’t likely, but it is surely the position the Xangan management would take if ever challenged legally. In fact, the reappearance of Bianca leads me more confidently than ever to deem that her tracks are effaced: there’s no tracking back! Bianca is dead! Long live Bianca!
Next: Bianca_ and Bianca_bianca
Bianca_ is a spinoff, namesake copycat of Bianca. And Bianca_bianca, the most recent same-authored spinoff yet. Both aliases, acting like Republican or Democrat candidates on the stump, carry their own cohort of self-propping adulators (as described in my last post). So the ploy is that Bianca_, or now Bianca_bianca posts a weblog, the author logs in multiple times with his/her own aliases, eProps the post incessantly, then poof! the post appears from nowhere at the top of the Featured Content list!
I really admire all the frenzied effort involved in this and suspect the author is a manic/depressive releasing the mania! Furthermore, I strongly suspect the author is Heresmy2cents—his/her appearance coincides and is strongly integrated with the rest of the ePropping Pack. But so what? Who cares? As James notes, the writing is brilliant—though hack-filled political diatribe even if humorous, I find not too appealing.
Of course, I don’t have to read it—and I won’t. My appreciation here is what the manic effort does for Xanga. The Xangods, no doubt, monitor Xanga statistics for activity and growth trends with a view to the future and, of course, the economic bottom line. Bianca_ and Bianca_bianca in their self-flagellating flurry of self-fashionable passion are a flying circus of commotion—a spectacle indeed! So if they are a Xangod creation to infuse more seed activity into the arena, they somewhat succeed. And if they are just Heresmy2cents’ manic self-backslapping creations, they also succeed in making Xanga look more lively, more active. More activity holds promise in making Xanga more viable and, hence, in the long run, truly sustainable. Do I object to their effort that leads to this effect? Hell no! Let them run rampant! Let them go! But knowing that it’s feigned and somewhat pathetic, I’ll merely watch and not take part in the spectacle.
So unlike Herakles, let’s refrain from boulderizing these Hydra! The necks we cut off main be our own.
Now that I’ve spent my own manic analytical energy thusly, I feel a need to return to some things of the heart… such introspections that await me, psychic inklings that dart about, probings into soulfulness that promise to carry me away! So coming back to you next time from the other side….
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Looks like another wave of spam aliases has reached the Xangan shores.
The other day, in a comment on one of James’s posts, I pointed out what I saw as a shambling charade to eProp another member’s posts, as they say, “to the top” :
Just one thing that caught my eye, that you happen to mention, and that I find a probable total sham is the barrage of comments and eProps on the Bianca_ posts of Mar 5th and 6th. Whether the posts were deserving or not of eProps and comments, it appears that about 11 of the 14 visitors on the 5th and 8 of the 11 visitors on the 6th were created on the 5th and the 6th! Moroever, many of these delivered their eProps and comments in rapid succession (minutes) of one another. Pretty strong prima facie evidence of a farce.
Here's a list of what I think were the aliases used to prop up Bianca_ : attentiondeficit, zookeeper, martinhannagan, agnesdei, billthecableguy, imajerksometimes, mudhens, sittinonthefence, zerointerest, margarethannagan, markmcguire.
Am I outraged? NO! I think it's simply time-consuming silly. However, if one person, as I suspect, is feeding a barrage of 20 some eProps to just one post and no others--repetitively--and those posts don't seem to be attracting much attention otherwise, I might see how some others scrunch their noses up as the cheesy odor wafts around Xanga.
Well, it seems that in the past hour (approx. 3-4 PM) a fresh amassing horde of similar aliases (which may, however, contain a legit new member or two—a very important point to remember) washed like seaweed onto the Xangan shore. Here’s a list, most of which look suspicious: webdreg, Tammers, whojackafibby, horshoe, blackandtans, triplehfanatic (Bianca), Cacophony, and poettommie. The creation of these was followed immediately by new postings from six of the same *new members* of Bianca_ minions created the other day (imajerksometimes, zookeeper, agnesdei, sittingonthefence, margarethannagan, and billthecableguy)…throw in FatBstard—who seems to attend all the same festivities with them—and Voila! Another round of probable ultra-praising xangborgs for the next (soon expected) Bianca_ implosion. Hopefully, one or two of the forementioned *new members* turns out to be more real than copycat Bianca_ and her hoary hordes of eProp xangborg maniacs.
By the way, Heresmy2cents seems often to hover awfully close to the tent setup of this slapstick circus...hmmm...has to be a coincidence!
Update: Bianca_bianca, a spinoff took all the cronies! And Heresmy2cents is the tenderonie! How pathetic!
Also, check out loopdeloup's update on the renewed schemings of the original Bianca.
And really I wouldn't give a damn except for the fact that I give a damn.
So more insights next post....
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So it's like Sumerian numerical…these numbers swirl like words while words are naught.
What's happening on the Xangan front (yes, multiple fronts there are-yet no affront to those who consider Xanga nearly life itself, or who crave blogging as an addiction) ? Let's see…
Number of active posts this week up 4% from 548 to 571 over last week…
Average number of eProps on the top 100 up (6.0 vs. 5.4) since the advent of BlogRings…but no trend discernible with so little (2 days) baseline, no, not yet…
Number of BlogRings up to 76 today from 58 yesterday with 223 members today! Since a member can join up to 3 BlogRings, that means that at least 75 members are ringing, probably more like about 150. Since there wer 571 active posts over the last week, it seems like about 1/4 to 1/3 of all *activists* have joined Rings. Not a bad response in the initial two-three days!
Uh-oh…no more searching the blog for "all time" eProp and comment awardees. Seems like Xanga jettisoned "all time" for shorter spans…yesterday…last 24 hrs…this week…last week… They must be attuned to Zen Buddhism and trying to live more in the now.
Got some scissors? It looks like the Xanga frontpage has dashed lined marked for folding or cutting. I'll cut, you fold-we'll figure this out!
Recently Created is back! Uh-oh… *looks about* they must have taken something else away! I see…it's not all new members for the last two weeks…the "more recently updated" page offers only a pseudo-random sampling of the new members ("reload" they say, to see more new sites)…nor do new members appear as they first come onboard. Nope! It's not the same as it used to be.
And what's the deal with the *TheXangaTeam* welcoming some new members and not others (confirmed!)? Is that random, too? Or does Bianca wake up in the morning and scream as she scans new membership, "Oh, Bugger! More of these little dip pots to welcome aboard…Arghh!"…then token an arbitrary one or two up the ramp?
Some fellow bloggers still have broken links from Geocities or 123banners.net or elsewhere. Xanga doesn't host our images yet, but here are some images it does have that I think you could substitute for a broken pic or the default "ole radiohead":
source:
http://www.xanga.com/images/thexangateam/team.jpg
source: http://www.xanga.com/images/bug.gif
source: http://www.xanga.com/Images/welcome.gif
source: http://www.xanga.com/Images/profile.gif
source: http://www.xanga.com/Images/blogringlogo.gif
source: http://www.xanga.com/Images/ufo.gif
Ha! A real Dadaist clipart gallery, wouldn't you say? Who thinks Xanga could use a less angst-ridden graphics artist?
So...you say you wouldn't be caught dead posting those graphics gems and are still in a real pinch? I can host some images on a paid-for business server. If interested, just drop a line and I'll see if I can help out.
These numbers, these images swirl…
but what of words?
Are words really all we have?
And, if so, are they not enough?
Are they doors opening to infinity
or doors to shut us out?
Word in, word out…word in, word out…
just like our breath, our chi.
Do you know my name?
Is that but another word?
Can I know your name?
Or is that another world? -
Blogrings? I’ve got blogrings? I thought I scrubbed the sink and toilet bowl yesterday! Maybe I need to mix a little ammonia in with my chlorine cleanser….Hmmm…The porcelain is a’sparkling, methinks…maybe I need glasses?…or black lights?…that’s it! I need black lights to see the fluorescence of these blogrings!
*black light on*
Ah! That’s better! What’s this? Yahoo? …*reads blogring faq*… I see…ringy things…hmm…here’s my thoughts thereon:
The Risk: Practically no one joins the rings. Xanga looks barren from the “ring perspective” leading to increasing disinterest and apathy, new membership dissuasion, and old membership loss. Xanga embarrassingly withdraws blogring concept or dies.
The Expected Payoff: Blogrings become a fun and attractive feature drawing excited new membership and revitalizing the sense of belonging and participation for existing members. Members love it so much they are willing to pay a fee for specially-provided private blogrings that offer even ringier features.
The Current Fallacy: (1) Blogring? It is not a ring! It doesn’t make a circle! One cannot enter the "ring" at one place and one-click navigate from “ring site” to “ring site” without exiting and returning to the externalized membership list. Hence, it is more along the lines of Yahoo’s search categorizations by supposed theme and content than a facile member-to-member navigation tool. (2) And supposed content and theme focus means just that. There is no line in the sand to constrain content or enforce a theme. Suppose David would design a Born Again Christian Blogring using Xanga’s provisions. And, thereafter, OURNIGHTMARE, e.g., joins it with dark intent. Even though David is the ringleader, he could not exclude OURNIGHTMARE. Membership in these blogrings is self-selecting meaning that there is no control over or assurance of relevant content—and there is no keeping out. Hence, any seriously cohesive blogrings that arise can expect, sooner or later, to suffer from a There Goes the Neighborhood syndrome as purposeful miscreants join in. But since there is no real ring or direct member-to-member linkage to begin with, the only real fallout is that the accuracy of these content categorizations is diminished with non-relevance.
The Xangan Intent: To serve us, of course! Free There-Goes-the-Neighborhood blogring pseudo-rings for everyone! But fee-based private blogrings, perhaps with theme enforcement and niftier true ring-type navigation tools, for the serious cult-ivators! (from the Blogring faq: “Xanga does not allow Ringleaders to restrict membership of a Blogring. In the future, private Blogrings may become available for a fee.” )
*black light…off? Oh hell! I’ll just leave this light on and do some drugs till it burns out*
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Wow...I have this eerie sense of impending distancing and dissolution. I can't be more exact-just a sense of things floating or falling away. Is this just an echo of my own inner uncertainties? Uncertainties that, even though I try to pin down, I can't give a name to? Or like some wild animals that can sense an imminent earthquake just before the earth shakes, do I have a read on something real and beyond me? Precipice. Precipice is the word that hangs on the tip of my tongue. Why does this notion of cliff-hanging over a sheer abyss envelop my mind like a fog? Just so…even so…or, perhaps, especially so…I hear a whisper of caution, and then move on. Sink deeper into my instincts and still move on.
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What a strangeness always the world brings when you open yourself up to it vastly! No room for routine as each succeeding surprise washes upon you like a tingling ocean wave. One learns how foolish mundane *expectations* can be. One learns to live like a tourist in a potentially predatory universe…
…to live like a tourist in a potentially predatorial universe seems to me to be not simply a valuable strategy, but an indispensable one. Conversant tourism predisposes one to fun engagement with a probing awareness, to sensitized discernment, and to activity without habituated involvement. Precisely: take in everything possible with heightened perception while never settling into a pre-fabricated template—a habit. For it is the nature of habits to inhibit conscious awareness for the sake of optimizing an efficiency in performance of some well-rehearsed structured task ("good" and "bad" habits are the same in this respect). But in a universe which can be changeable and predatorial, yet the structure of which is otherwise largely unknown, habits—either good or bad—may turn into fatal assets without warning.
As a youth of 14, I started seriously entertaining notions of a, no—wrong word—not “a” but “my” first love affair with a girl. Oh how romantically consuming it was to going to be! How marvelous this country, this America to provide young men like me this opportunity! Ha! How much did I know? Nothing! I woke up 11 years later as a sergeant in the U.S. Army stationed deep in the heart of Central America—still a virgin! There I was: warrior-clad, a father-figure to my troops (who’d ask me, time to time, for paternal advice about making it with their girlfriends!), in charge of a jungle mission, and still wondering why the monkeys in the coconut trees could get it on, but not me!
So what the hell was I doing with my youth for all those years? Too much of everything to ever be bored! I read books while others frolicked, but I stayed tuned with utmost attention. You might say that my attention was transfixed somewhat by the psychic television network (PTN) that played its transmissions endlessly but unrepetitively, for my enrichment, at times I thought, and then at other times I thought, in preparation for my mortal demise. What played on that channel? You name it! I watched two Catholic popes die in their beds while I was laying distantly in mine. I caught unrehearsed glimpses of several heads of state betrayed, subsumed, and destroyed. I watched the PTN with such consummation that I grew a third eye! And that third eye had great acuity in detecting a nemesis that had a habit of stalking me now and then from behind. *duck* ! Of course I could see it coming! How else could I have survived?
So the sexual allure of my youth—to and from girls—while always there, played like a *ping* with a TTL (time to live) of: timeout! I *pinged* but got timeouts always since the PTN channel redirected everything to infinity or thereabouts before even toying in echo a response. “In time…in due time,” I reassured myself--a thought which was so completely out of that world and beyond the bounds of then referable time.
But I was reborn in the jungle! I found my manly fate in the tropics! Thus my affinity with all tropicalities: the procession of humidity and heat, the huge blue slow flapping flutterbys, the python stretching so long across the road that its head and tail was obscured by the encroaching junglement, even killer-bees that suffered me to walk among them! Even vampire bats that led some troops in unawakened sleep to a painless pallid death! All of it dangerous, all of it beautiful, all of it shared with an open heart and the deepest sense of intimate relatedness. All of it me! All of it and "my first lover" so becoming a fulfillment so becomingly!
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So many seats unfilled here in this midday coffeeshop. Where is anybody who could ever matter that might sit in that chair? Yet Xanga is ever replenished with new postings…seats that are never empty: how picturesque….
Mind wanders...where are friends and what's a lover?....
Never, oh, never…*thought breaks*... as I contemplate the floor-tossed shrouds of impersonal betrayal—et tu Giovanna?…*thought breaks*... what if I were to become a cyber vampire…and the internet the correlate expression of my longevity? Years upon years pass and never a variance: to remain and persist so agelessly far beyond the trace of memories discarded and forgotten.
Eliot and Cummings mix in my thoughts: Women come and women go, come and go, talking of Michelangelo. And all in green goes my love riding on a great horse of gold into the silver dawn….
I imagine a workout to release my frustrations: I punch at the punching bag…once…twice…in rapid succession…then back off with a sidekick, and in a finishing move, roundhouse the bag with the left side of my right foot. The pain is mine but so is the rehearsed victory.
These little mind games get me no where. I must sink yet deeper into this desperate night tonight awaiting before I emerge renewed in the morning which is spring. I will face my desolation. Intrepidly. And then return.
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Today I didn’t climb a mountain again. Why? Because it wasn’t there. Had it been…if only…I tell myself. And so this unclimbed mountain has become my metaphor of many ifs. But so often have I not climbed this (perhaps somewhere existent but hidden?) mountain of late, so many ifs have I postulated in contrast to the monotony of not, that I’ve grown tired and fatigued of the effort altogether now. More drained, in fact, than if I had run up the slope of the last real mountain nonstop.
So is it my imagination that fails to provide me with a start? Or is it the mountain that doesn’t imagine me—I am not a part of its visualized geography? And, hence, unworthy of the part.
And if I were to feel the same about the lack of a lover by my side…if only…(as my sanity departs)
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"I Won the Xanga Sweepstakes Laptop!!!!!!"
Well, someone gets to make that claim today!
According to the Xang-gods: "The winners will be selected in a random drawing from among all eligible entries by March 1, 2001, to be conducted by Xanga designated judges, whose decisions are final."
Wait a minute--winners? I thought they were only giving away one laptop! Nevertheless...
When will we know who won?
According to the Xang-gods: "The Grand Prize winner will be posted at www.xanga.com by March 2, 2001."
So come on back now, ya hear!
And what are the odds of winning?
According to the Xang-gods: "Grand Prize: Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop computer. Total Value: approximately $1,500. Xanga reserves the right to substitute the Grand Prize described herein for a similar laptop of equal or greater value. Odds of winning depend on the number of eligible entries received."
Well, since according to these Xang-gods: "Earn 1 entry for joining + 5 entries for everyone you refer to Xanga.", then by all odds Bianca should win!!! HA! HA! Most of us are her nympholepts led here by her spritely seductions from GeoCities!
But seriously, I thought of trying to calculate the odds just based on Xangan membership alone without the 5 bonus entry provision, but it seems that is no longer possible!
About a week ago, Xanga changed the search engine. It now longer allows for a complete perusal of all members as was possible when you could search all names alphabetically beginning with any and every letter of the alphabet. Rather, now you are only able to get filtered views which, statistically speaking, are non-exhaustive and non-exclusive of each other. What this means is that it is no longer possible for us to compute the total membership accurately! You might say: so what? But I had been doing so privately, collecting data points to track membership trends, which I was going to publish at some point when enough data over time had been collected. I guess Xanga just doesn't want to worry or alarm us with numbers! Who needs to know how many of us there are? Be assured there are millions!!!
Yet, the current search mechanism does allow for some trend tracking. Below are the graphic results of recent post activity by gender over the last week and the last two weeks. I didn't delve back further than that since I consider someone who hasn't posted in two weeks not to be *active*. At my last count in mid-January, there were over 2,500 members. So even by that dated count (which is no longer possible to update), there appear to be at least 1,800 non-active (no new posts in last two weeks) members! Maybe Xanga should have given the laptop away on the basis of the frequency of posts and not mere membership or recommended memberships. That way, those active among us--who can use that laptop for doing this--would have had a better chance of winning!
Oh well, we'll see: Probably one of the Xang-gods' girlfriends will end up with the laptop anyways!
Yes, men, we appear to be a minority here in Xanga-Amazonia!
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