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!