Okay, I admit: you Xanga girls have got me going today.  As in, turned on.  As in, hopelessly obsessed.  So now I must face the Beast (self) and turn to the subject of Breasts.

It all started this morning with Deviant and her eloquent lambaste against Victoria’s (Secret) Shame.  Well, I’m a mature adult and I can follow a powerfully lucid assault against a marketing injustice that slights a particular segment of women (large-breasted) without getting sexually excited, right?  You’d think!  But even though I read the whole thing through and felt it was a top blog, I passed on leaving a comment or even a prop.  Coward you say?  No, no, I was just getting going.  Tempestuously telescoping and unavailable to comment (i.e., quite probably thinking at that time with some other organ). But I intended and have, indeed, already returned to comment.  Yet first…

I stopped at Lyssa’s Question of the Day where she asked:  What was your favorite toy as a child?

And I replied quite innocently and spontaneously:

I used to play late at night with my older sister's friends' spare bras when they'd sleep-over.  Could that be considered a toy?
Otherwise, water balloons!!!
Funny, how I always imagined water balloons felt like breasts!

Do you see where I was going?  I didn’t at the time , but I wasn’t quite yet done…

I next stopped at Erin_Go_Braless’s blog (wow, what a coincidence!)  which I first mistyped as Erin_Go_Go_Braless (hello, Dr. Freud!) even as I heard myself whisper in my mind to myself *Erin_Come_Braless*  which I was seriously equating with TOPLESS!  Not quite the same, huh??

There I got hit with:   …I’m going to have one more lover in my lifetime and I will fall in love with him.  So…how long is this gonna take?  And who’s the lucky man?!?!

At this point, I’m was gushing with hormones and replied:

If this is a lottery, I'm going to buy ALL the tickets!
How long is it going to take?  Well, we'll have all night, won't we??!!

Yes, notforprophet lost it at that point.  His entire intellect squandered with a rush to passion!

But I’m back now to recompense.   Having regathered my thoughts like pick-up-stix, I feel, just maybe, I can yet contribute meaningfully to the common dialog.  So here goes:

Bras are essentially an exoskeleton like a turtle’s shell or a Nautilus’ conch which provide shelter, support, and protection to the creatures residing therein.  Blame the Earth and its hideous gravity for the need for bras because in weightless space breasts would stay as you put them—pushed up, pointed down, squished in, however!—weightlessness is the perfect braless medium!

And, yes, the symbol of patriarchal oppression so righteously burned in the 60's was, in fact, invented by a man.  Henry S. Lesher patented this device

 
in 1859 (even though 3rd century Roman art depicts two bra-modeling girls whom I just saw down at the beach yesterday !!):

Now, girls, if you want a really huge bra, according to sexualrecords.com,  you should contact Parisa by Amir of Van Nuys who constructed the largest bra ever for a lingerie show at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas 1996. The bra measured "approximately eight feet across in a closed position," the company said, "approximately 16.5 feet in an open position and measures approximately four feet high from the bottom to the top of the cup, not including the strap."

I, for my part, am currently envisioning a new household invention that would mold custom-made disposable bras consisting of a sheer veneer of breathable artificial skin  to a woman’s breasts according to her own easy control panel instructions.  Want just a hint of support?  Input.  More lift?  No problem.  Hunker ‘em down like hostages cause you’re about to run a marathon?  Turn the dial--Got it! 

The artificial, non-allogenic, para-grafted skin will adhere seamlessly and imperceptibly with your own skin, offering support with the merest of tension, and will be exquisitely comfortable since it will always move with you!  And whenever you want, just peel it off and throw it away.  Hrm…might even make it flavored and edible for a litle bit more fun in the bedroom!

I WILL redeem myself!  Yes!  Now it’s time to get to work! 

The Last Xangeroo

Someday. 

Someday, in a hopefully distant future, the last Xanga blog will be stillbirthed.  And I imagine that last blog will say something simple like “Goodbye.  And thanks for all the memories.”   Nobody will be left to read it.  Nobody will probably have been left for a very long time as the very last blogger will have resolutely remained upon the lone plain of posts well beyond the last scuffle of dust from anything even resembling a click-through.   

All the good old posts will have been lovingly read over and over again by the last Xangeroo.  And even the strange odd posts which never even had a single reader in their own time will have been visited and sentimentally propped by this last propper.  All will have been read and all propped out.  With nothing left unexplored, there will be nothing left to do.  Like Alexander the Great sorrowfully eulogizing after realizing he had conquered the world with no quest remaining, the last blogger will shed a tear at this vanquished turn in time.  And this lone writer himself or herself will finally and reluctantly  decide to post the last post and never again look back.  It will be as sad as setting down a rose and walking away from a visit to a lover at a graveyard.  It will be as proverbial as an old-soldier fade-away.  Exit, stage left, old snagglepuss.  Not going away mad, just trudging wearily but peacefully away toward an ephemeral vision of a well-deserved, awaiting, eternally-rewarding Bloghala.

So I commemorate this last Xangeroo now since such an appreciation will be unavailable at the moment of finality.  And I invite all of you, too, to wish-well to this last Xangeroo who, someday, will undoubtedly stumble upon this post.

Hail to thee, the last of the Xangeroos, the very last of all of us!!!

(btw, who amongst us might this intrepid spirit be??  or can we imagine that the world yet awaits the birth of this fated blogger??!!)

I once imagined a cyber-dependent future not too distantly-fetched when isolation and incarceration for certain crimes, under certain circumstances, would be enforced by denying personal access to the internet.  Instead of locking the person in jail, they would be locked out of all  e-accounts.  Instead of “home arrest” they would suffer “internet exile.”

I now imagine a cyber-dependent future even less distantly-fetched, in fact practically imminent, when isolation and incarceration for certain crimes, under certain circumstances, will be enforced by mandating compulsory personal interaction only on the internet.  Instead of locking the person in jail, they will be required to remain online and blog their criminal admission and contrition incessantly.  Instead of “home arrest”  they will be monitored by an implanted microchip and drugged until they are  “xanga-obsessed.”

I’m really sorry if this speculation upsets you.  I know how much we all love Xanga.  Yes, truly sorry even to bother with such  a silly Orwellian conjecture.  Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. x1000. x10,000. (Is that enough?  No??!!)  Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.   (Is that enough yet?  ARgggh!!)   Sorry. Sorry. Sorry….

I am here.
Where are you?
No, no, don’t go away.
This “you” isn’t someone else.
This isn’t a romantic “intended” message for a special only someone.
(I’ve heard such special someones exist,
But how can I lose what I’ve always missed?)
If you’re reading this, you are probably you.
You’re you!  Your you.  My you.  Our you!  Are you?
If you are you, then…
This is for YOU! 
You are my fun,
Will you be my thrill?
I’d tumble for you down any hill.
I’ll live for you.
And even love.
(If lightning doesn’t strike me down from above.)
I’d probably even die for you.
For the thousandth time again and again.
But will I blog for you as the heavens move?
Oh…oh…oh…oh…
I’m lost for speech
Just out of reach,
For unless I’m mistaken,
That is the question.

Lost Again

Lost Again

Lost Again

Lost Again

Lost Again

Lost Again

Help

Re: What If…

Well, it appears I’m not an ePropWhore—
My looks are much too gruff.

And I’m certainly not Bianca—
I’ve already damned her quite enough.

I ran circles around the Army—
getting high on all their whiff.

And, oh my God, it looks like I
just ran out of my if’s.

So I guess soon now’s a good time
To prop-push a curious post

To let you see just how I saw
A world leader turn to toast.

“Some things are unxangable.”

…I can’t believe what I just said.
Like saying a tired child
Should never be put to bed,
Like saying that falling raindrops
Should never touch a flower,
Relinquishing to the Unspeakable
So much hidden power!

But some things are unxangable
And never to be xanged.
Just don’t ask me what the hell  they are:
I’ll only twang *shebang!*

Chorus: ( she bangs!
              she bangs!
              he only twangs, she bangs!)

Oh yeah, some things are xangaphobic
And rue the day you try
To stick them in a friggin’ blog,
‘Cause that’s the day you die!

Chorus: ( she bangs!
              she bangs!
              he only twangs, she bangs!)

So when the fateful day arrives
And I no longer blog,
Be assured that the most Unspeakable’s
Got me hostage in her fog.

Chorus: ( she bangs!
              she bangs!
              he only twangs, she bangs!)

A Bite of Americana

Fresh from the Howard Stern show...

Howard: She should give me an Angry Dragon.  Do you know what an Angry Dragon is?

Robin: No.

Howard: An Angry Dragon is when a girl is giving you oral, and you slap the back of her head, and it all comes out her nose.  That is an Angry Dragon.

All I can add is that free speech is a beautiful thing, but sometimes imagery can be too apropos.

What if...

   I told you...

1) That I'm a female. That's right--a chick,

and

2) I was the once somewhat notorious Bianca Broussard,

and

3) In the military, I was involved as a principle agent with a Special Warfare section exploring the use of psychics and their powers to undermine the enemy's intelligence capabilities,

and

4) I was psychically involved with the death of three world leaders.

*What-ifs* can be fun, especially if thus qualified: only one of the four propositions above concerning me is true.  Only one.

So what do you think?  Should I 'fess up??  Or just move on to the next silly post?

Mwhahahaha!!!

I've been sitting around for the last 15 minutes trying to think of things I could invent that could make me some money.  So far I managed to brainstorm:

1) A substance that would stain stainless steel.

2) An umbrella that would automatically fold up in moderate to high winds so as to avoid fatal umbrella inversion.

3) A spam-like anti-booger spray that keeps boogers from sticking to your fingers when you pick your nose.

4) Russian Roulette Condoms--dares can be fun: one in the 12-pack is guaranteed to fail.

And last but not least...

4) Peelable stickers that you can place over the auto-flushing "eyes" of public latrines so as to avoid that embarrassing reduction to flush automation.

Now I bet you're wondering why I'm not afraid to share these ideas even prior to securing the all-important intellectual property-protecting patent??

See ya in the patent line!

In Loving Memory of Wildheart…

“I wanted nothing to do with life until I was forced to face death.”
       Posted 1/1/2001 at 12:59 pm by Wildheart

The above comment was the first on my first post of the new year, which is reprinted at the bottom below.

Wildheart was a warrior who took to Xanga like a wilderness and helped to make it a worthy place to wander in.  Before things “settled down” (never!) here on the blog, Wildheart could always be counted on to be in the fray and at the heart of controversy.  Whether it was drawing a line in The eProp Wars (whether eProps or comments were worthier) , getting a read on the Overall Popularity Ranking controversies (bloggers were intitially featured by the week on how many overall eProps they had received for the week—not daily by any particular blog) , or exposing the Bianca spam, Wildheart could be counted on to arrive on the scene with a bullshit-slaying sword in her hand.

Yet, ongoing too, was her battle for personal survival, her reoccurring bout with cancer, which she fully here (in Xanga) shared.  She embraced the letdown to the disease’s ravagings both through depictions of graphic suffering and despair and spiritual triumph through personal transcendence.  I was here moved by her display of strength and intrepidness, inspired by her untamable (Wild) intellect,  and comforted by her embracing vision (Heart) of Eternity.  Some of you may remember her “trademark”  signature  *l*   which she would leave besides her comments.  I always wondered what it meant.  Bright eyes, I imagined.  Bright, fiery eyes projecting the firestorm of a beautiful spirit.

I imagine over the next couple of days that many more of us will have memories and observance of Wildheart.  The blogs that I’ve come upon so far include (no order) those of JadedFey, loopdeloup, Prometheus, toreibjo, celeste, ryans_mom, JDMoore, SuperSonicSunny, Your_Conscience, barney, TewSmart4U, Losing2gether, litboiler, Jewels, Lady_Roxy, kazual, SirThorn, nash, Skywater, beckerbuns, gholmes, and Kiersten.

Here now is the reprint of my January 1st post to which Wildheart responded with the comment at the top of the page.  I did not know her as Diane Elizabeth King until today.

“Today is a good day to die!”

daily morning prayer of Crazy Horse, 19th century warrior.

1) Rumi, a 16th –17th century Sufi (Persian) poet observed: “No one knows your real name until your very last breath.”

2) Schwelgien, a 21st century American non-poet has further observed: “The process of your birth finds no surcease until your very last breath.”

3) Furthermore, the process of your death commenced with your very first breath.

4) There is only birth and death. The common perception that birth and death are discrete entry/exit terminals with a segment of life (lifespan) “in between” is misleading. Birth shades into death as death shades into birth. Any segregative distinctions are superfluous.

5) If one views life as something sandwiched “in between” discrete dichotomies of birth and death, then one is apt to consider as the foremost practical issues: “What do I do with my life?”, “What am I to make of myself?”, and “How am I to make a living?” In other words, one encounters the difficulty of what to do with the “intervening” segment of time. If death is seen as something inevitably awaiting us, the issue is: "What can (should) we do while we wait?"

6) If, however, one understands life as the ever-developing and interacting processes of both birth and death, then no “intervening” undefined state arises. One is always being born to some degree (a logically fuzzy birth) and is always dying to some degree (a logically fuzzy death). And naught else.

7) Hence, life is never the matter of fill-in-the-blank. Destiny is always occurring. “Life is much too busy being everything to seem anything--catastrophic included,” 20th century, e.e. cummings.

8) Death in the common perception is merely a spectator sport. Everyone watches “the event.” Even the person dying, if conscious, is sometimes inclined to observe “the event.” “I don’t want to die!” is then the lament. As if there were another choice! As if one hasn’t been dying from one’s first breath!

9) Death is truly experienced as a unique process--no fingerprint, no snowflake is as individual as each and every one of our deaths. Yet we never die alone. Which amounts to saying that no one lives your life but you, yet you never live alone. "No man is an island," 17th century, John Donne.

10) Gossip assumes the pretense of knowing someone’s real name before their last breath. In this light, gossip is seen as a form of societal hyperventilation.

11) Death always shames those who gossip. People who gossip live in secret shame because death makes gossip infamous. Who dare gossips about the dead without dread of recrimination?

12) Hence, gossip is the deathcast in the spectator sport of life. Woe on he or she who lives watching death and dies watching life--by proxy through gossip--without ever fully living and dying themselves. As Merton, 20th century mystic-monk, made out: there are “those who hide in the shadow of an answer to a question they are afraid to ask.”

13) Kerouac, a 20th century American poet/writer observed: “There is only the Golden Eternity.”

14) There is only our Golden Eternity.

So Much Sucks!

Superman Sucks!

Sure he does.  Ask yourself: Has he ever helped you personally?  Hell no.  He’s all about show.  And glamour.  And just taking his cut from the comic sales.  WHERE, AFTER ALL, HAS HE BEEN WHEN IT REALLY MATTERS?  Where was he during all the wars, especially WWII , when western civilization was aching for assistance in battling the Nazis?  Apparently, during such episodes, he anticipated the future Federation’s Prime Directive of Noninterference and sat steel bum on his steel hands! 

Oh no, you say??  You say he tried to enlist in the service but was turned down for active duty??  In his defense, you claim he COULDN’T pass the physical and got a deferment??  Yes, that’s true—so true.  But do you know how he flunked the physical, hmmm?  Well, he failed the vision test!  And do you know how he failed the vision test?  When the doctor asked him to read the eye chart, he used his x-ray vision to look through the wall to another doctor’s office and read that eye chart which was a different chart and so he flunked the exam!  Come on, now!  Don’t tell me he didn’t know his x-ray vision had kicked in!  Either he was a total idiot or the sneakiest little self-lying conscientious objector weasel to ever slither away from combat!

The Marlboro Man Sucks!

Philip Morris has released a study conducted last November in which it claims that the Czech government is actually saving money (about $30 million dollars annually) in health care, pension, and public housing costs through the early death of smokers.  In other words, Philip Morris is touting the fact that getting old people to die younger by smoking has a positive budget impact for governments.  What looming Social Security problem??  Philip Morris has found the solution to the bankruptcy of the Social Security fund in 20 years: mandatory smoking by pre-retirees!!  They want you to suck…suck…suck..and...

You Suck!

Well, not actually you as you, but you as assessed by the Personality Disorder Test that is raging around on a lot of xangeroos' sites the past couple days.  I bet all of you have seen the results, looking something like this:

Though fun, this is a very, very bad test.  Answering *yes* to everything insures all high marks while answering *no* to everything assures equally uniform low marks.  No assessment test worth anything would ever allow such patterned responses to result in such predictably consistent results.   Hell, you might just answer *no* to everything because you are the most compulsive nay-sayer alive and, guess what?  Your obsessive-compulsive rating outcome (along with all the other categories) would be LOW! 

Finally...

I suck. 

Of course!  Look at my score on Disorders above!  LOL!  But wait...what I really mean is that I love to use straws much more than ordinary folks.  I guess it was a fascination I developed as a child while drinking chocolate milk in grade school—and it st’uck (contraction for still suck(s)) !  Now I drink anything I can through straws—hot coffee, beer out of a can, wine, soup—you name it! 

And there are play straws, too: bathtub straws, and pea-shooting straws, and even bedroom straws (oh yeah, they really suck!) Either I’m preparing for space life and zero gravity where everything gets sucked or a distant old age when not having any teeth sucks!

 Now be honest and 'fess up:

This post

A) Really sucked.
B) Tried to suck and made a sucking sound.
C) Didn't suck enough.

Thank you and enjoy Mr. Potato Head.

Other Sirens, Other Shores

I don't know where to begin.  Perhaps another beer would help.
Or perhaps the last one hurt too much.
How strange a day as blessed as can be that transforms weak fascination into compelling lucidity.
Somewhere midst the day, the world jumped away from me.
Was it the chemicals I was working with—the toluene, the naphthols, the glycerines that wreaked their havoc and delivered me unto this mischief of things bereft?
How is it that my notion of yester morn which implicitly and unquestionably hailed women as ascending seductresses now resolves to an impression of them all as virtual lesbians??
I'm in a world of hurt, if hurt can be.  Though my mind is keen, it's broken free of this mooring called collective reality.
So my only true personal face-to-face contact with another person today was with a lesbian….

Oh, I know now that another beer can help, brb…
Ah, the wine bottle's closer and to hell with the glass!

Oh yes, this woman cared for me.  Oozing empathy, as none other has for a very long time.  And she played the flute.  And she played the cello.  And it settled my nerves as I worked for her to prepare her sanctuary from the rest of the world.  To adorn her attic as a habitable space, a secret garden hidden from the whole else of all gap, and all strife, and other forms of life that would surely debase.  But of her I beheld as impassionately as can be.  And all the manly desires in which men typically indulge, which were my daily rejoice, fled from me.  And have not returned yet. 

After finishing the chemical stripping, and prep, and painting in her attic for today, sensing I was psycho-sexually rearranged, I felt a need to reclaim myself and so impulsively, even juvenilely, strolled into a tiddy bar this eve.  But there I encountered nothing but lesbians too.  Every girl, a lesbian!—who would have guessed?? Well, perhaps, not in their own actuality, but virtually so anyway, this evening,  for me.  And as I sat there, what my vision took in was truly inconsequential since my whole spirit was sinking into the accompanying hi-tech sound-system songs, the resounding rhythms, the enchantment of melody.  All so sexless.  All so perfectly blessed.  Broken free. 

Perhaps in this music where I now reside,  I'll find myself the luckiest man alive.

good morning sleeping ______!
                       (insert your name here)

my night has passed away
and soon, too, you share this same day!
(at least, same sun, though photons differ)
now, if I, but of humanity can embrace....
this day.

(Or shall my wings melt and shall I fall to earth?)

Are you  a serious blogger trying to establish readership but fearful that if you miss a daily post your readers will vanish into thin air?  (It’s happened before!)

Are you overwhelmed by the more than 1200 daily updates (and growing) of fellow bloggers and oppressed by your own inability to keep up with your own “Sites I Read”??

Do you sometimes crave to articulate your heart, to blog forever under the stars, but find yourself on occasion too ill or expressively lackluster to push the pearl that’s your beauty in blogform???

Is that’s what’s bothering you, Bunky?

Well, then be bothered no more because Blog Underwriting Leave’em and Love’em (president, yours truly) is here to help you cruise the fast lane to the finish line. Yes, for a nominal fee, you can now blog freely and happily without being concerned should you go on hiatus, take a vacation, have an unexpected blog-debilitating accident (I think of our dear VeryModern’s recent mishap), or be taken hostage by the thought-police.

True to our motto of “Blogging where nobody’s blogged before!”, we are prepared to draw upon myriad resources to provide you with quality material designed to fit the style and mood of expression that you desire.

For a spot token fee of only $1.00 per post ($1.00 additionally for an appropriate graphic), we can keep your blog throttling forward with the unshakeable resolve of a Sherman tank treading through a desert storm.  We will keep you on track!  And your tracks will make an unmistakable impression in this Xangan landscape which, though poppled with peeps, may become a veritable desert in extent should the blowing sands of daily demands distract and detour you from your blogging passion. Yes!

And don’t worry about comments for your benefactors anymore either.  For another measly dollar you can get:

30 blithe comments   or
10 pithy comments    or
5 brilliant comments

left wherever and when, according to your pre-planned arrangements!

And if you don’t care to be encumbered by piecemeal temporary pricing schemes, we now offer Blog Insurance!  Yes!  For only $50 semi-annually we will monitor your blog and cover your absence in all instances except death. 

And even death cannot stop you now!!!   If you include us in your will in perpetuity for a heavenly fee of only $300 a year, we will continue to blog on your behalf into and beyond the grave.  Correct: we are now offering you Virtual Blogging Immortality!

You might ask how are we able to do all this at such ridiculously low prices?  Well due to a breakthrough in the design of the HAL 10000 autoblogger, combined with Xanga’s ability to post via email and certain custom autoresponder email agents that we’ve designed for our Lotus Notes client, we can promise you CONTENT like never before! 

We are so proud of our CONTENT and we so stand behind our CONTENT that if you’re not fully 100% content with our CONTENT, we’ll accept payment in eProps (terms, should such an unlikely occurrence ever arise, to be arranged by a binding arbitrator).  Yes!  We are the first bona fide business to make eProps more than just goodwill currency!!!

So take the fear and uncertainty out of blogging!!!  Let Blog Underwriting help you Leave’em and Love’em today!

Stood Up

Well, that can happen to a guy when the girl asks him out, has the loge tickets to the concert, and then never again calls or connects.

Journey with Peter Frampton and John Waite: last night, gone.

So I head to a bar to do shots of forgetfullness and some girl next to me won't stop bragging to me about the kick-ass Aerosmith concert she went to and how she met the band in this bar the past weekend and...and...and....

I said shots of forgetfulness.  After listening to her, I'm drinking doubles.

And then my inner spirit-guide started melodiously screaming at me: *Save yourself--no one else will.*

I think it enjoyed hearing itself in the drunk and empty echo chamber I had become.  Comfortably numb.

Lucky for me, I think my inner spirit-guide is suffering the worst effects of an otherwise tolerable hangover.  Serves it right for playing me for acoustics.  So today my spirit has no guide.  And I am feeling bad.  No, not *bad*...

BBaadD

So ready or not, here I come.

For (((VeryModern)))

who left the following comment as way of an explanation on a post down below:

I am just working through something, or rather a lot of somethings at once.

I posted what I thought was an explanation, but it was mistaken for something else (and easy to see why, although I didn't in advance) and so I had to pull it too, or fuel the fire.

For whatever reason xanga turns into a hot heat kitchen for me on a regular basis.  Each time it does, I am forced to retreat and regroup by my nature, and so this is what I am doing now.  
Fighting fires.   Root for me!

Okay.  Let's get another hose over here, quickly.  And crack that hydrant open--Xanga's a'crackling and needs a good drenching...

The young men in Athens are doing absolutely shocking things, and there's no excuse for it.  For there are very fine-looking girls available at the brothels.  And you can see them standing there outside, breast bared in the bright sunshine, almost naked and lined up conveniently one after another.  From these anybody can pick out a favorite: skinny or fat; curvy, lanky, or bent over; young or old; firm or lush...These girls just about drag you in, calling the old men "Daddy," and the younger ones "Lover Boy."  And you can have her, cheap and without any risk, available day and evening--and any way you want her.

Xenarchus

Athens, 549 BC, remarking on the 1st legally established public brothel.

Were those the "good ole days" ??

"Of that which we cannot speak, we must consign to silence."
       Ludwig Wittgenstien, Tractatus

So James has announced a period of silence, VeryModern has seemingly embraced the same for an unexplained reason, and space movies where you see and hear warring ships explode in space are bullshit 'cause there ain't no sound in a vacuum. (okay, I know it's possible that at least one someone is going to check the accuracy of this proposition, conclude that his, her vacuum makes sound, and consider me an idiot.  Fine.)

But as a community of Xangeroos, we've been busier than ever:

3/9/2001

Number of active posts this week up 4% from 548 (last week) to 571 …

Average number of eProps on the featured top 100 up (6.0 vs. 5.4)

7/11/01

Number of active posts in the past day: 1075.

Average number of eProps on the featured top 100 for the past day: (15)

7/18/01

Number of active posts in the past day: 1125.

Average number of eProps on the featured top 100 for the past day: (16.5)

Power to the Peeps!

To phrase (or paraphrase) Rumi: “Life is like a cup upon the ocean...soon it will fill and sink and not one bubble will remain where it has subsided.” 

Yes...not one bubble will remain, but the ocean will never cease to froth with effervescent bubbles and resurgent foam.  Then, too, the cup which sinks becomes full and remains full--the truly full-filled state of any container.  And possibly, no probably, that sunken container will become a shell, a shelter, a refuge for other forms of journeying life. 

But I don't want a hermit crab living in my favorite beer mug...yet.  So embracing bouyancy and sucking on that big bubble of air in my chest called breath, I'll float awhile.  Thank you.  But not one bubble of carbonation will remain in my beer mug when I'm done with it!  I say: Rumi, come drink with me, and let's kick ass!

An eerie calm has beset the land.
I feel like I'm walking in the desert at noon hard-boiling my toes in the sand.

So rarified, so tenuous the connection seems.

Who pretends to be psychic?  Pretense is sham.  What you are, I am.

So has anyone else missed VeryModern?  She's MIA along with her last couple of once-public posts.

Is the dialectic reverberating?  VM--MIA, JadedFey in an extra-YaYa mode, GudKarma suffering bad karma??

Every now and then, a certain sense, an inkling.  Xanga is doing it again.

I love Premium Xanga.

But I miss the ads!

Can't I eat my cake and blow out the candles too? (I'll cry if i want to...)

Ah!!!  Now I feel better!

Fairestc is celebrating her 3-month Xangan anniversary (like teenagers dating--yay!--or, ya-ya, hey?!) which led me to recognize that she is now a xangalescent!

The time-lifeline of xangaroos (like you and me) is now emerging from the fog of Xang-Bang creationism:

xangaweanling up to 3 months

xangalescent  3 to 6 months

xangarelic 6 months to a year

and, pick one:

xangantique...xangarerun...or paleo-xangazite   one year and up!  (ain't that something to look forward to??!!)

Of course, all of this is more or less since some bloggers burnout prematurely and become xangacidal!

Further evidence of the Principle of Xangan Indeterminacy (Xangan Uncertainty Principle--"You can't stay off and be on at the same time."--see previous blog, 2 down):

from DelightfulDaisy:

Today is my first day at trying to stay off the internet.  Well, I will still be online, just not all day anymore.

from bubblecar_girl

Not in the mood to post a long factory bitching entry tonight ...

Feeling lonely ... a tad depressed ... and extremley fat  Add tired to that list and you have me currently ...

Hopefully in more of a blogging mood tomorrow

[I just felt I had to post something ... arrgghh... xanga addiction!!]

Help!  I'm blogging and I can't prop up!

Now for the main event.  My thinking about the ethical life lately has simplified into a single commencing outlook or preparatory departure.  To the extent that one must assume the role of warrior in the course of life, the proper attitude is, first, one of discovery.  Set out to discover the world with as little prejudicial pre-instruction as possible.  This sense or disposition toward discovery is essentially the quintessential characteristic of the authentic tourist.  Thus the warrior is, first and foremost, a tourist.  But he, she is a wild tourist and never enwrapped by the traps of consumerism.  He or she sees like the enlightened bear that goes over the mountain (i.e.,...The bear goes over the mountain, the bear goes over the mountain, the bear goes over the mountain...to see what it can see.  And all that it can see, all that it can see...is a novel  apprehension of reality, a novel apprehension of totality, a genuine rendition of infinity...is all that it can see....)

 So the warrior tourist goes about doing his, her best at taking the whole world in, and concurrently, either 1) enjoying it fully, or 2) challenging it awfully with the roar of embattled engagement.  Now the warrior’s act of enjoyment or engagement may seem to an observer as a response--the product of a calculation employing a set of  personal decision rules.  But this is really not the case at all.  Quite otherwise, this enjoyment or engagement is an organic outgrowth of his, of her initial disposition towards prime apprehension of the world.  If there is thought attendant to this process, and there often is but not invariably, it is typically not studied and tortured, but guiding and informative.  It is not the instance of finding oneself at a fork in a road (a la Robert Frost) and pausing to decide one way...or the other.  Rather, attention to the moment leads the warrior invariably onwards upon the trail blazed for his, for her destiny and the joy or engagement that ensues is merely the appropriate interpenetration of the warrior’s will with the way of the world as it is manifested. 

To see...and see...and see: the spectacle of life fully for whatever it is.  And to do so joyfully or engagingly.  

So here's an example of this from my own life, and perhaps you'll laugh for the humor intrinsic in the situation, but I think it exemplifies the attitude which I'm here attempting to depict:

A friend of mine and I were at a baseball game and between innings we decided to leave our seats and go to the beer stand to get another beer.  As we turned away from the field and down the rampway under the stands, my friend nudged me to turn back around and behold three utterly cute chicks standing two feet away at the precipe rail to the field, stretching and waving, backs turned to us.  They were up on their toes, and with hourglass bodies and booty-tight shorts, they were pure oozing paradigms of nervous sexuality.  I first looked at my friend's eyes as he visually drilled them from head to toe.  I then looked to them and beheld what he beheld and lusted for,  but...there was something in their bodies' energies-- a wiggle, a dance, what?  In unison their arms reached up, a baseball zoomed above their reach, and... 

My friend never saw it coming.  Well he saw it, but because he was in a stimulus-response mode, he was too late.  The ball was heading square for his nose, two inches, one inch away.  He flinched from the expected impact, but there was none.

As I was predisposed both to the enjoyment of wiggling butts and an understanding of how they danced in that world, I engaged the moment thoughtlessly.  Even as I was thrilled by the sight, my hand snatched the ball from in front of my friend's nose with the back of my hand just brushing his nose.  Had I made a conscious decision to act so?  Hell no.  Was it merely a reaction to the sight of the flying ball?  Two feet away, I never would have had time to so react successfully.  I had felt the lightning before it struck, I was predisposed, and my hand snatched without an instruction from my mind.  My friend was as unbelieving as I was unthinking: I had saved him a broken nose.

Oh yes, I was quick.  Jackie Chan quick.  In hindsight, I snatched for the wrong thang, but that's another story! 

And, oh, the ball?  David Justice threw it from the outfield in response to the girls' attention to him between innings.

Damn!  What a sight!  What a moment!  And my friend, needless to say, bought the beers!

I am so perfectly content not to blog today.

*So why did I even post this?*

Are you not perfectly content to not be reading this today?

*So why the did you just read this?*

The foregoing was an explicit public service portrayal of the Principle of Xangan Indeterminacy (Xangan Uncertainty Principle). If you're not certain what that principle is, stare at an eProp until it confesses the truth.

far away from the cares of others,
upon a sun-drenched wind-swept field of soft, uncut grass,
under the shade of a sheltering willow tree,
you say: “I have an awesome pussy.”
i nod and say: “i see.”
And we celebrate,
imaginatively,
without further spoken pleasantries.

I am in a mood where I am succumbing to the tortuous tease of beautiful women loose and large.  “Ground Control to Major Tom, your circuit’s dead--is there something wrong?  Can you hear me Major Tom?  Can you hear me Major Tom?...”

I awoke much this way.  So what transpired in the sleep of the night to set me on the edge?

The dream I awoke from...I was faltering, fading into an unrecognizable terrain.  There was a post--something like a huge mushroom stalk without the cap.  Only it was covered with cloth and bound with cords or straps.  I was grabbing onto this post for bearing, just a little orientation when a guide spirit informed me that not until I almost entirely collapse would a woman come to my assistance.  A woman, just a woman?  Not just a woman--but a woman in intimate relationship.  Aha! I thought.  Until now I’ve been too strong for the approach to a relationship.  Always active, always on the move, never faltering, never giving in.  Time to give in, suggested the guide spirit.  Time to go down.

“...Cause I’m close to the edge....I’m about to loose my head. Huh-huh-huh.”

Time to level it.  Level like the outer skin of the atmosphere.  Level with the hum of health that believes in the body’s own wisdom.

just jottings...madly inspired, wine-inspired, tossed here aside, raw and unfinished, to provide you an insight into my primitive mind...

death as a participation in life: Lindburgh contemplating crashing into the sea: as immersement in the life of the sea.

finding the endpoint of life within oneself as the measure of individuation.  but also a premature determination of the endpoint of life as oneself  as a form of modern social pathology.   This prematurity consisting of cutting the social ties prior to sanifying initiation  in a growingly complexifying society.  This society has increasingly blurred the distinction between freedom and adriftness;  and now increasingly casts out (hence, makes outcasts of) those who due to lack of supporting mechanisms (nurturing neighborhoods, initiating structures, individuating opportunities) waddle adrift in their search for democracy's promise of freedom.

consider America's obsession with "dirt", i.e., the profane intimate lowdown on people's faults, frailties, and pathological proclivities as a measure inversely proportional to its genuine appreciation of the land as sacred, i.e., "dirt" as the source and return of life.  Signifying the obsession: the once willingness of media to contract with Oprah Winfrey, mistress of sensationalism,  1/2 billion dollars for 7 years of dirt digging.

 Nature as love's absorption.  Nature as the organic charcoal filter to social and mental delusions.  Potential and seeming synchronicity as a strictly personal truth (unshareable) unless the touch, the expression, and the relationship is unambiguously established.

  this thought: act like the world owes you something and it will abandon you forthwith; act like you have something to give the world and it will quite likely embrace you like an only child.

The current media-hyped cultural expression of American femininity as a sham; the concurrent media-hyped cultural expression of American masculinity as a concomitant sham--co-conspirators in shamdom.

Nothing profound to say this morning:  I’m off to play with paint.
In the meantime…
TecnoFunnies...courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:
 
 Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key  is.

 AST Technical Support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on.  The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.
 
 Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes.  A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with photocopies of the floppies.
 
 A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door.  The customer asked the tech to hold on and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door.
 
 Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything.  After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician  discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "Send" key.
 
 Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked.  He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually. A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was "bad and an invalid."  The  tech explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.
 
 A confused caller to IBM was having troubles printing documents.  He told the technician that the computer had said it "couldn't find printer."  The user had also tried turning the computer screen to face the printer but that his computer still couldn't "see" the printer.
 
 An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on.  After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button.  Her response, "I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens."  You guessed it... the "foot pedal" turned out to be the computer's mouse.
 
 Another customer called Compaq Tech Support to say her brand-new computer wouldn't work.  She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen.  When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked, "What power switch?"
 
 Another IBM customer had troubles installing software and rang for support. "I put in the first disk, and that was OK.  It said to put in the second disk, and had some problems with the disk.  When it said to put in the third disk, I couldn't even fit it in...."  The user hadn't realized that "Insert Disk 2" meant to remove Disk 1 first and so on.
 
 In a similar incident, a customer had followed the instructions for installing software.  The instructions said to remove the disk from its cover and insert into the drive.  The user had physically removed the casing of the disk and wondered why there were problems.
 
 True story from a Novell Net Wire Sysop:
 Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?"
 Tech: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?"
 Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period.  How do I go about getting that fixed?"
 Tech: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?"
 Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer."
 Tech: "Please excuse me. If I seem a bit stumped, it's because I am.  Did you receive this as part of a promotional at a trade show?  How did you get this cup holder?  Does it have any trademark on it?"
 Caller: “It came with my computer.  I don't know anything about ‘promotional
 ’.  It just has '4X' on it."
 At this point, the Tech Rep had to mute the caller because he couldn't stand it… he was roaring with laughter.  The caller had been using the CD-ROM drive load drawer as a cup holder and snapped it off the drive.
 
 A woman called the Canon Help Desk with a problem with her printer.  The tech asked her if she was running it under Windows."  The woman responded, "No, my desk is next to the door.  But that is a good point.  The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window and his printer is
 working fine."
 
 Tech Support: "O.K. Bob, let's press the control and escape keys at the same time.  That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen.  Now type the letter "P" to bring up the Program Manager."
 Customer: I don't have a 'P'."
 Tech: "On your keyboard, Bob."
 Customer: "What do you mean?"
 Tech: "'P'... on your keyboard, Bob."
 Customer: "I'm not going to do that!

My musings lead nowhere, so profitless!  While the world revolves and evolves around me, I feel backwatered in obscure speculations about what others, quite rightfully, never even consider. 

For instance, everyone breathes.  In, out, in, out.  But how much of our breathing on this planet is synchronous?  Are more people at any given moment breathing in or out?  Perhaps there is a preponderance of one mode at any given moment: say, 90% in, 10% out.  Perhaps true world harmony has everyone in one mode all at once: 100% in, then 100% out—a Richard Simmons Breathathon!

Or perhaps the design of true world harmony is more intrinsically embedded in the motions of the heaven and the habitual wisdom of the body.  Human circadian rhythms actually have a period of about 25 hours in the absence of any time cues (clocks, sunlight/darkness, etc.).  Yet the 24-hour day disrupts our innate rhythm requiring us to compromise the body’s wisdom.  We are so entrained to the 24-cycle by both natural and artificial cues that doctors would diagnose someone living out the innate 25-hour circadian cycle (also labeled an infradian rhythm) as having “circadian rhythm disruption.”    Yet the day on earth is lengthening.  And the day will come, in a somewhat future (5000 years hence), when the actual length of a day on earth is 25 hours, matching the innate 25-hour cueless human circadian clock.  (This is because the earth’s rotation is slowing due to tidal drag at the rate 2 ms per day, or 1 second  every 500 days, or 1 hour every 5000 years.) That will be the moment of true synchronicity!  No longer will we compromise to the earth’s clock but match it and share the same fundamental rhythm.  The fulfillment of the Age of Aqaurius!  (Providing future generations dispense with “leap seconds” which keep us shackled to the 24-hour “atomic clock”.)

When you look down at the ground do you ever wonder who or what you might be seeing on the other side of the earth, if the earth was translucent and your vision was sufficiently keen?  This is the old “digging to China” conjecture (which for North Americans is misnamed since, if we dug through the middle of the earth, we’d end up in the Southern Hemisphere!)  I do this constantly (wonder, not dig, that is)—as if I’m expecting to actually garner the information.  Also, when thinking of someone geographically beyond my horizons, I often mindlessly wonder in which direction and what azimuth I need to gaze to be looking “as if” upon them.  Well, matter notwithstanding, I am seeking the shortest distance!

Oh, prodigal me!  Such fruitless intellectual revelry. Clearly, I am no match for another here on Xanga, our very JadedFey, whose gimlet pondering cuts to the core of reality to reveal the most beneficent concern for societal well-being:

“When I lay back in the wee hours of the evening ... (depending on where I am in accordance with the earths revolution around the sun) and gaze out of my window to the sky ... thinking consciously about how many others in alternate dimensions may be doing the same ... It always comes back to one thing (no pun intended ...) *Who is getting laid and why.* “

Can a man be a slut?

*looks in the mirror. grimaces horribly. shakes head*

Is that a yes or a no?

666

she is our

 perfectdrug

so perfect.

so drugged.

5..

Sorry. This number is still unavailable/

5..

Sorry. This number is restricted due to its current popularity.

444

So VeryModern.

333

222

111

I act wild and alone: watchful, observant.  Wild is not maniac: gesticulating boisterously with exaggerated bravado and little concern for steamrolling others in the world.  That’s mad, crazy, violent--but not wild.  Wild is watchful--like stepping on ice whose thickness is unknown and observing everything, anything that may give clue or cue to that first razor thin breach of the ice’s integrity--that sizzling perforation of the ice that develops like a quick fuse burning and portends an immersion catastrophe.  Wild is often just this quiescence: potent, gimlet observance.

Chang-tzu, Taoist mystic, asks: “Who can wait until the moment for action?”  Only a truly wild woman, or wild man.

Think of the character of William Wallace (Mel Gibson) in the movie Braveheart.  Now there was a truly civilized wild being.

I have no idea what the following statistics mean--hey, I'm only a professor teaching master-level Stats, what do you expect??!!

3/9/2001

Number of active posts this week up 4% from 548 (last week) to 571 …

Average number of eProps on the featured top 100 up (6.0 vs. 5.4)

7/11/01

Number of active posts in the past day: 1075.

Average number of eProps on the featured top 100 for the past day: (15)

Random sample of who has Premium (and who doesn't): 1 out of 25.

How much time I have left to amass such statistics: yeah, right.

Oh, yes, the largest breasts officially recorded:  33 inches in circumference and nearly 44 lbs. each:

And the most breasts, called polymastia: a 23 year-old Polish woman in 1886 with 10 milk-secreting hooters.

Source of the latter two insights: www.sexualrecords.com

My Kingdom for a Kiss??

When I was  a very young, impressionably quixotic kid, I grew up hearing over and over again from my favorite aunt that the most romantic, glorious, and dreamy example of a Man’s undying love for a Woman was Edward VIII’s (King of England) abdication of his throne to marry a divorcee, Wallis Warfield Simpson.  The story went that in England in those times (1936) it was scandalously impermissible to be both King and married to a divorced woman.  So Edward gave up the kingdom for love.  For a kiss!  Sooo romantic!

It turns out now, however, that Edward, reduced to the duke of Windsor, was apparently entirely pissed for being compelled to abdication.  Hence, he began to conspire with the Nazis and the fascists during the Second World War to create a revolution in England, overthrow the Churchill government, depose his newly enthroned younger brother, George VI, and reinstall himself as King and his wife as Queen Wallis.  This conspiracy was uncovered by English intelligence and thereafter he was closely “handled”  by the Royal family and relegated to a position of total obscurity and innocuousness as the governor of the Bahamas for the duration of the War.  The story of “incredible, all-surrendering romance” was then further hyped by English intelligence and the Royal family in order to maintain a false decorum of Royal propriety and suppress any rumors of dark intrigue.

This fairly recent revelation, to me, has had the equivalent shock value to my childhood-nurtured thoughts about love and romance that Watergate had upon my faith in government and elected officials.  I guess that the old adage that “all’s fair in love and war” is literally true.  Especially when, as in Edward’s case, love was war.

In response to my previous blog, John, the CEO of Xanga posted the following comment which I think is deserving, due both the the stature of the pronouncement and the elucidation therein found, of more exposure.

I applaud John for being so forthright and prompt with this clarification.  I am much relaxed in finding his outlook kindred and relieved to have him dispel the hazy speculations that were lingering about this rather unusual "news" post:

sometimes you amaze me, nfp.

i didn't affiliatize the link...  i was just wondering what the heck oneirocritica meant and found out it was a book - so i linked to it.  xanga doesn't make any money off of the link.  feel free to mouse over it - there's no affiliate code.

lately, i've been thinking about featuring some sites that are using xanga in different ways...  didn't realize this would upset anyone.  maybe i'll create a separate part of the frontpage to feature random
sites...  you are right, maybe it's not a good idea to mix "xanga news" with "interesting sites".

ok, and now for my emotional reaction: i really enjoy your blog, even when you are attacking me or criticizing xanga.  lately it's getting to me tho...  maybe i'm just getting tired after working startup-hours for a few years.  despite this, however, you are free to say whatever you want - i've tried hard to make xanga a censorship-free zone...

btw, please don't bother jodi...  i just thought her dream-blog was neat.  she had nothing to do with this "conspiracy".  in fact, if you ever suspect another conspiracy and want to bounce it off of me, feel free to bounce it off of me at john at xanga dot net.  (fyi, there's no ploy to get celebrities blogging...  i don't know any celebrities!).

i hardly have the moral high ground here - i haven't taken the time to explain to our community what xanga is all about, who works here, etc.  i'm going to take the time to do that on my blog over the next few weeks. 

john
ceo, xanga

And, John, of course, not only will I not bother Jodi (never would), I'll enjoy her continuing contributions as a fellow member. And, as I am now illumined by your above explanation,  I delcare my appreciation for your general support of us as members in such regards.

Elves are immortal.  Nymphs live 10,000 years.  Unicorns last 1,000 years.  Gnomes grow old at 400.  Dwarfs are geriatric at 200.  Trolls die when exposed to sunlight.  But most interestingly of all, fairies remain only until Doomsday--dies irae, dies illa. 

There seems to be a trend which may signify a curious coincidence or some deeper underlying pattern in the structure of language with words that end with the long vowel sound o.  Just a simple listing by cruising through the alphabet: doe, foe, go, hoe, joe, low, mow, no, roe, sow, tow, woe.  Doe and roe are both forest creatures which serve as lowly prey to numerous predators which are their woeful foes. A hoe digs in the dirty dirt in which a lowly farmer can sow the hay which he will then mow.  We go to the coffeeshop for a cup of joe because we’re feeling low (and coffee’s a stimulant). No?

I once propped Holly to the top
'Cause I liked our world so Green;
Two props for VeryModern
Just crowned her Xanga's queen.

What is Xanga’s  Satuday July 7th “news” hype about “What is Oneirocritica?”

First, let me prefix by saying this has nothing to do with Jodi’s blog as such,  It is not clear that she is even involved with the Xanga Team’s concocted “news.”  So unless the Xangods promotional hype evolves from a tacit interaction with her, and there is no indication that it does, let’s just leave her out of this discussion and consider her just another good-spirited blogger amongst ourselves.

But what kind of “news” is this?  Jodi’s site is “cool”, but a lot of sites here are just as “cool” but as yet unacknowledged in Xanga “news”.  Is Xanga going to start regularly promoting random “cool” sites as a special feature in their news?  There are art sites, there are poetry sites, there are religious sites, there are philosophical sites, there are cancer sites, there are birthing sites—just a lot of specialty sites that are really “cool”.  When do we start hearing about them in the “news”??

Or are the Xangods merely featuring Oneirocritica because they can tie it into an affiliate Amazon.com sales (a book written by a 2nd century A.D. Greek named Artemidorus Daldianus) ??  Jodi, did they secure your cooperation to promote their book sales??  Hey, if an ad shows up on a billboard promoting the sales of Jack Daniels liquor and I’m holding the bottle, you could be damn certain that JD better have gotten my tacit permission (and provided me with at least a year’s supply of the Black label).

So I maintain it’s “cool” to feature “amazing new” member blogs, providing there is an opportunity for other worthy blogs to be fairly and randomly so featured also.  But if this is just the Xangods blatantly pushing a book sale because they saw the opportunity to tie a member’s username into a marketable commodity, then you Xangods SUCK!

Which brings me to another consideration that I have withheld until now.  I had a sense, a notion about a month ago that Xanga might innovate “non-anonymous” blogs.  That is, instead of you or I just signing up with a created username and password and no other credentials, I had this inkling that the Xangods might try to innovate “credentialed blogs” which Xanga would insure us are, indeed, the “celebrities” so represented.  So book authors, or movie stars, or “experts” in any number of fields might start showing up with Xanga’s Seal of Good Blogkeeping in testimony of their authenticity.  So there could be a genuine no-doubt Howard Stern blog, or Angelina Jolie blog, or Stehen King blog, whatever.

 Forget it!  The day that happens, I’m gone forever.  I not only enjoy our opportunity for equality in anonymity, I treasure it.  If Xanga ever goes elitist in any sense that demotes the common blog by favoring a blog bannering high-falutin credentials, bye-bye crass commercialism.

from a morning chat with a friend...

oh I’m fine, now, thanks!

I just got back from a morning run—and every deep breath I took was positvely joyous!

But yesterday, what that was about was that the rice was I was eating was much too dry and I took too big a bite and it just stuck!  Yuck!

I figured that I had about 15 seconds more before uncontrollable panic set in.

But afterwards  I felt peaceful, and thought about all my friends  that I would have come to miss had fate had a different turn.  Last night then I slept very soundly, got up bursting with energy this morning, ran, and feel great--except for having to go to work!

I think if you have a near death experience, you should get a paid holiday the next workday--that should be the law!

Of course, then we would become a society of psuedo-suicidals living on the edge of life just to win days off from work!

This just isn't funny at all--I just almost died from choking on some food.  I was 40 seconds without air, without movement in my windpipe.  I felt my head start to pound, I couldn't swallow, couldn't cough.  There was no one around to assist.  Pressure was building but nothing gave.

I saw the stalemate.  I saw my body dropping to the ground. I saw the pale rider.  I didn't panic.  I didn't care.  Something informed me there was a way out.  I paused.  I assessed.  I closed my eyes.  I opened my mouth and a small stream of saliva dribbled to the floor.  My body suddenly heaved.  My windpipe cleared somewhat,  I could breathe slightly.  Encouraged, I reclaimed life.  And coughed.

And...but where is my part?  What part to play is this societal movewind, whirlway, rollerride?  First and foremost, I find myself eco-centered.  I heed the horse I ride upon ( I do not ride all night and never see the horse beneath me) and I do not pick up the vagrant feather (which cannot be cast away as easily as one would imagine.)  I tour environs, memories, associations, situations,  eidetically, cinematographically, but always only as a virtual unclingon. If asked what’s happening or how I’m doing, I’d like to feel that I can respond with the words of e.e.cummings:  “Life is too much being everything to seem anything, catastrophic included.”  I’d like to feel that I could always greet people with Rumi’s prompt: “How aren’t you?”  Moreover, I would like to always feel that I could describe my undercurrent sense of life’s worth with Crazy Horse’s proclamation: “Today is a good day to die.”

 Well, I haven’t died yet.  Life is too much being everything...and, oh. by the way, how aren't you today?