202 Things About Me
(only half of which are true)

Of course, I couldn't do the standard *101* list.  I like wild expressive colors and that would have been like drawing on the chalkboard with white chalk.  Oh...I know what you're thinking!  On the other hand, no I don't.

1. I’ve never killed a man with my bare hands.
2. I’ve never had the urge to do so
3. I witnessed the death of two Popes personally.
4. They both died blissfully
5. I remained a virgin until the age of 25.
6. I had no problem with that
7. I lost my virginity overseas to a goddess from Brazil who was passing through the port of Panama on an unforgettable tropical night.
8. She had huge breasts which mesmerized me
9. I’ve never played golf.
10. I miss never having had the chance
11. I’ve never ridden a horse.
12. I dread the notion of getting saddle-sore
13. I earned an Expert medal in marksmanship the day John Lennon was assassinated.
14. I had nothing to do with his assassination.
15. I hate starting off every sentence with *I*.
16. My favorite music is country
17. My favorite color is black
18. Purposely defying grammar, my periods at the end of sentences always go outside of any “quotation marks” .
19. Never went to or through 4th grade.  Skipped it.
20. Never went to 7th grade neither
21. Never graduated from high school (stopped going for the last two weeks, took no tests, never went to graduation, or received a diploma) but was accepted into college.
22. Enjoy Fall season the best
23. Took graduate courses in philosophy my freshman year in college.
24.  Have never lost my love for philosophizing
25. Only once had a completely effusive hands-free orgasm (all the way) while fully dressed just at the sight of a fully dressed girl.
26.  No, it happened twice
27.  Beat a professedly-ranked master in chess once.
28.  Played varsity high school football
29.  Was the quarterback
30.  No idea how much money I’ve wasted in my lifetime.  But it’s a lot.
31.  Currently have ten functional computers in my house but only use two.
32.  But am totally unwilling to part with even one of them
33.  Once strolled through a mass of killer bees.
34.  Got stung by a poisonous snake and nearly passed out
35.  No longer care about being a millionaire
36.  Shook hands with a President
37.  Was a witness personally to the death of a Panamanian “strongman” .
38.  Can read Chinese.
39.  Backwards
40.  Once made love to a Chinese girl
41. And ate her fortune cookie
42.  Have written a computer virus
43.  Studied Arabic for 4 quarters in college, got all A’s, but learned little more than the alphabet.
44.  Got an autograph from O.J. Simpson
45.  Once wrote a love poem in Latin.
46.  Know at least 20 curse words in Latin
47.  Got straight A’s in graduate school except for a B from one professor who would end up in jail for fraud shortly thereafter.
48.  Have met 6 other Xangans in person.  Made love to all 15 of them
49.  Have a normal heartbeat of 52.
50.  That’s the same as my age
51.  Have an extra bone in my body
52.  Shave my head usually once a year
53.  Had my life saved once.
54.  Once saved the life of a drowning infant
55.  Carried a concealed weapon without a license for a long time.
56.  Never used it.
57.  But thought often about using it to snuff myself
58.  Deadly with a bow/arrows.
59.  Never have killed anything with a bow.
60.  Have distanced run for exercise at the extreme temperatures of +120 F and -17 F.
61.  Can press twice my weight in gold
62.  Prefer room-temperature beer.
63.  Have ugly knees
64.  Prefer everything at room temperature except showers.
65.  Am a scientist. Have published 4 refereed scientific papers.
66.  Once had a stint as a standup comedian
67.  Am a wallpaperer of masterful accomplishment.
68.  Have built my own deck
69.  Am a graduate school professor.
70.  Slap students silly who fuck with me
71.  Always carry a condom
72.  Had an affair with a student whose fiancé committed suicide
73.  Once held a position with the title of “Economic Analyst II”.
74.  Once passed along some counterfeit money that I realized had been passed to me
75.  As a kid, stole books from the public library
76.  Never get a headache.  Haven’t had one, outside of a couple hangovers, for twenty years.
77.  Haven’t vomited for longer than that.
78.  Am fascinated with middle names
79.  Once shot a cat in the head (mercy killing).
80.  Once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
81.  He died good
82.  Ever paid for sex?  Wait…that’s a question.
83.  Fasted once for about a week.
84.  Thought about sex the whole time
85.   Constantly think about sex even now
86.  Love to eat out at restaurants by myself
87.  Cannot resist chocolate
88.  Didn’t speak a word once for about 4 days.  Not even to myself.  Was not even thinking in words at the time.
89.  Once pretended I was blind to get in free to a movie theatre
90.  Once had several hundreds of plants in my house which I spent hours watering everyday.
91.  At least one of the plants was marijuana
92.  Like to collect and eat wild edible mushrooms
93.  Have included a secret code in this list to allow you to determine what’s true from what’s not.
94.  Am addicted to xanga
95.  Love fencing with a foil.
96.  Once got stabbed in the back
97.  Grabbed the knife and bored the punk a new asshole
98.  Once thought I had discovered the secret to perpetual motion.
99.  But abandoned the notion when I realized that I couldn’t masturbate forever
100.  Pondered the true meaning of *Infinity* at the age of four.
101.  But failed to formulate it into words
102.  Had daily visits from flying saucers while a youngster, but they stopped.
103.  Never have seen one since
104.  I can tell if a woman is telling the truth by looking into her eyes
105.  Was caught once carrying a concealed weapon.  It was not confiscated nor was I arrested.
106.  Have never been in the news.
107.  Have never done anything newsworthy
108.  But would love the publicity
109.  Once slapped a girl I didn’t know on her ass.  Hard.
110.  Didn’t get slapped back.
111.  Apologized
112.  Next to Chinese characters, love the Russian alphabet next best.
113.  Had a fully functional knowledge of unconventional weapons and tactics (guerrilla warfare, evasion and escape, incendiaries, etc.) at the age of 15.
114.  Can recognize most of the constellations in the sky.
115.  Know many of the star names in each of the constellations.
116. Always know where the planets are in the sky
117.  Was once a weatherman.
118. Forecasted a hurricane
119. Chased a tornado
120. But hate to get surprised by a storm
121. Once found a serious liturgical error in a Catholic book that had been granted a Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur (Papal assurance of error-free doctrine).
122.  Sometimes pretend to know kung fu.
123.  Was a Reagan backer when most Republicans still considered him an undesirable fringe *Conservative*.
124.  Was a *Conservative* myself when it was a dirty word.  Ceased to be one as soon as it became acceptably mainstream.
125.  Was allowed to enlist in the Armed Forces even though I signed a statement admitting that I had used illegal narcotics.
126.  Have been arrested but never charged with a crime.
127.  At times can invoke an eidetic (photographic) memory.
128.  Haven’t been in a fistfight since grade school, even though I’ve faced up to the potential challenge at least 30 times.
129.  Learned once to play one song on a guitar.  Drove my neighbors nuts with that one song all summer long.
130.  Have recently lost weight.
131.  Take no interest at all in pornography but love to see nekkid girls.
132.  Would not be too shocked if one or two of the Laws of Nature failed.
133.  Am psychic, but not *a Psychic*.
134.  Have an extremely high tolerance for pain.
135.  Truly enjoy the smell of skunk if not too strong.
136.  Enjoy the smell of ammonia beyond the point of tears.
137.  Never sniffed glue.
138.  But tasted it
139.  Always strive to be first in everything
140.  Won a photo contest—first prize.
141.  Have no problem inventorizing words.
142.  Once could dunk a basketball even though only 6 feet tall.
143.  Can punt a football 50 yards
144.  Never had a homosexual experience.  Never even contemplated one.
145. Never was even offered the opportunity
146.  Once splashed acid in my eyes and had to wash it out for half an hour.
147.  Once proposed marriage to a girl who took immediate offense and ended our sexual relationship on the spot.
148. Love to gamble
149. Once lost a big wad of money gambling
150.  Have no tattoos.  Deplore jewelry.  Never wear a watch.
151.  Considered by a porn star as her fetish *foot boy*.
152.  Love beautiful female feet.
153.  Love just the right type of fuzz on female forearms too.
154.  Always look to see how physically powerful a girl appears to be.
155. In my mind, the bigger the tits, the better
156.  Often found overdosing on cheddar cheese and wine
157. Love talking on the telephone
158. Often prefer chatting online to blogging
159. Have never read more than one book in a day
160. Have never bought a book without the intention of reading or gifting it
161. Will oftentimes read in bed
162. Cheated at least once on a college exam
163. Am a huge sports fan
164. Find pure mathematics fascinating
165. Am constantly enchanted with probability theory and the use of statistics
166.  Have blogged under four other xanga identities.  None too recently.
167.  Favorite wild animal is the wolf.  Favorite domestic animal is the kitty.
168. Once had a pet ant farm
169. Favorite bird is the Bluejay
170.  Know how to kill a Pit Bull or Bull Mastif, if necessary, with my bare hands.
171.  Still play in puddles all the time
172. But seldom get wet
173.  Prefer the genre of suspense when reading
174.  Once hid in a tree from the cops.  Was up there with another friend drinking beer.
175. We were not laughing our asses off while they were cruising around down below on the ground
176.  Once published my own book of poetry which scandalized a Catholic girl’s high school.
177. Apologized for it
178.  Never dated or went to a dance in high school.  Read books all the time.
179. Read all of Shakespeare’s plays
180. Was fascinated as a child with anything scientific.
181. Built my own reflector telescope 
182.  Had a speaking vocabulary as a 12-year-old far in excess of any adult I personally knew.
183. Am a honey connoisseur
184. Prefer tea over coffee
185. Could survive just collecting and eating wild edible plants and insects.
186. Once booked and took a day-trip by plane simply to meet a quite amazing online friend (xangaroo, no less).
187. Never ever loose my sense of direction.
188. Always know where I’m going
189. I often have trouble pissing in public
190. Never had sex in a girl’s restroom
191. Was harassed today by a woman at work.
192. It felt good
193. Was once charged in the workplace with sexual harassment (I was truly innocent—she seduced me) but was only slapped on the hands.
194. I still love that woman
195. Was once savagely attacked while a kid by a man because I was playing *war* with friends in a Nazi uniform (I was *the enemy*) and the man had psychotic flashbacks to the German concentration camp he had been tortured in.
196. Can perform several magic tricks
197. Card tricks are my favorite
198. Just love to play poker
199. Paid cash for my first motorcycle and rode it home without a license and without ever having ridden on a motorcycle before.
200. Parachuted out of the first plane I ever rode on
201. Am allergic to bee bites
202. I know how to end this list. Amen.

I seek not fun nor entertainment, but inspiration in whatever form arises. This leaves me open to sudden surprises from untoward sources: saints of bigamy and a scourge of divorces. ...And so they ran out on the road--those Beats with stories seldom told, but with emboldened hearts to take on the load of a cosmic ennui lazily legacied by terminal policities of the powers that be. Beat them down? Beat them up? NO! Beatific was the stuff from which their vision sprung and grew. Beatify me and I'll beatify you. Rage against complacency and howl at the moon.

So Gregory Corso was friend and fellow Beat of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, and many. When he read the following poem at New College in Oxford in 1958, a lot of the members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who were there didn't catch the Beat, but allowed their ideology to seize their guts and squeeze their nuts until they all sounded like frantic goats in rut. Ginsberg came to his fellow poet's defense, pleading for surrender unto the poet's muse with a woo of ecstatic release, hoping their angst they'd lose. But to no luck. Ultimately disgusted, he then called the dissident students a bunch of assholes, thus reifying the great cliché of nature: that assholes yearn to bunch.

Hey, if you can't suck the whole BOMB down, grab a piece of shrapnel here and there...

                           BOMB by Gregory Corso

                           ---------------------

               Budger of history   Brake of time   You   Bomb

      Toy of universe   Grandest of all snatched sky   I cannot hate you

        Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt   the jawbone of an ass

     The bumpy club of One Million B.C.   the mace   the flail    the axe

   Catapult Da Vinci   tomahawk Cochise   flintlock Kidd   dagger Rathbone

    Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine   Pushkin   Dillinger   Bogart

 And hath not St. Michael a burning sword   St. George a lance   David a sling

 Bomb   you are as cruel as man makes you   and you're no crueller than cancer

  All Man hates you   they'd rather die by car-crash   lightning   drowning

Falling off a roof   electric-chair  heart-attack   old age   old age   O Bomb

     They'd rather die by anything but you   Death's finger is free-lance

  Not up to man whether you boom or not   Death has long since distributed its

  categorical blue   I sing thee Bomb   Death's extravagance   Death's jubilee

   Gem of Death's supremest blue   The flyer will crash   his death will differ

    with the climbor who'll fall   to die by cobra is not to die by bad pork

Some die by swamp   some by sea  and some by the bushy-haired man in the night

   O there are deaths like witches of Arc   Scarey deaths like Boris Karloff

    No-feeling deaths like birth-death   sadless deaths like old pain Bowery

  Abandoned deaths   like Capital Punishment   stately deaths like senators

   And unthinkable deaths like Harpo Marx   girls on Vogue covers   my own

     I do not know just how horrible Bombdeath is   I can only imagine

      Yet no other death I know has so laughable a preview   I scope

      a city   New York City   streaming   starkeyed   subway shelter

        Scores and scores   A fumble of humanity   High heels bend

            Hats whelming away   Youth forgetting their combs

          Ladies not knowing what to do   with their shopping bags

            Unperturbed gum machines   Yet dangerous 3rd rail

          Ritz Brothers   from the Bronx   caught in the A train

                The smiling Schenley poster will always smile

                   Impish death   Satyr Bomb   Bombdeath

                     Turtles exploding over Istanbul

                         The jaguar's flying foot

                        soon to sink in arctic snow

                     Penguins plunged against the Sphinx

                        The top of the Empire state

                    arrowed in a broccoli field in Sicily

                 Eiffel shaped like a C in Magnolia Gardens

                       St. Sophia peeling over Sudan

                     O athletic Death   Sportive Bomb

                       the temples of ancient times

                         their grand ruin ceased

                      Electrons   Protons   Neutrons

                         gathering Hersperean hair

                    walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady

                          joining marble helmsmen

                       entering the final ampitheater

                     with a hymnody feeling of all Troys

                        heralding cypressean torches

                         racing plumes and banners

                 and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace

                       Lo the visiting team of Present

                           the home team of Past

                       Lyre and tube together joined

                     Hark the hotdog soda olive grape

                      gala galaxy robed and uniformed

                      commissary   O the happy stands

                      Ethereal root and cheer and boo

                     The billioned all-time attendance

                          The Zeusian pandemonium

                            Hermes racing Owens

                          The Spitball of Buddha

                            Christ striking out

                           Luther stealing third

                      Planeterium Death   Hosannah Bomb

                     Gush the final rose   O Spring Bomb

                     Come with thy gown of dynamite green

                       unmenace Nature's inviolate eye

                         Before you the wimpled Past

                   behind you the hallooing Future   O Bomb

                        Bound in the grassy clarion air

                         like the fox of the tally-ho

                  thy field the universe thy hedge the geo

                 Leap Bomb   bound Bomb   frolic zig and zag

                The stars a swarm of bees in thy binging bag

                      Stick angels on your jubilee feet

                    wheels of rainlight on your bunky seat

                     You are due and behold you are due

                       and the heavens are with you

                   hosanna incalescent glorious liaison

                 BOMB O havoc antiphony molten cleft BOOM

                    Bomb mark infinity a sudden furnace

                 spread thy multitudinous encompassed Sweep

                         set forth awful agenda

              Carrion stars   charnel planets   carcass elements

             Corpse the universe   tee-hee finger-in-the-mouth hop

                       over its long long dead Nor

                    From thy nimbled matted spastic eye

                    exhaust deluges of celestial ghouls

                      From thy appellational womb

                   spew birth-gusts of of great worms

                        Rip open your belly Bomb

               from your belly outflock vulturic salutations

               Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps

                       along the brink of Paradise

                         O Bomb   O final Pied Piper

                both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz

                          God abandoned mock-nude

                 beneath His thin false-talc's apocalypse

                        He cannot hear thy flute's

                        happy-the-day profanations

               He is spilled deaf into the Silencer's warty ear

                    His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax

                      Clogged clarions untrumpet Him

                        Sealed angels unsing Him

                      A thunderless God   A dead God

                       O Bomb   thy BOOM His tomb

                 That I lean forward on a desk of science

                  an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose

               half-smart about wars   bombs   especially bombs

              That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love

                That I can't exist in a world that consents

            a child in a park   a man dying in an electric-chair

                    That I am able to laugh at all things

          all that I know and do not know   thus to conceal my pain

              That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man

           knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men

                and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship

                           That I am manifold

                     a man pursuing the big lies of gold

                      or a poet roaming in bright ashes

                    or that which I imagine myself to be

                a shark-toothed sleep   a man-eater of dreams

                   I need not then be all-smart about bombs

              Happily so   for if I felt bombs were caterpillars

                   I'd doubt not they'd become butterflies

                         There is a hell for bombs

                      They're there   I see them there

                       They sit in bits and sing songs

                     mostly German songs

                      And two very long American songs

                    and they wish there were more songs

                   especially Russian and Chinese songs

                  and some more very long American songs

                    Poor little Bomb that'll never be

                       an Eskimo song   I love thee

                        I want to put a lollipop

                            in thy furcal mouth

                     A wig of Goldilocks on thy baldy bean

                  and have you skip with me Hansel and Gretel

                        along the Hollywoodian screen

                      O Bomb in which all lovely things

                   moral and physical anxiously participate

                 O fairylike plucked from the

                          grandest universe tree

                      O piece of heaven which gives

                     both mountain and anthill a sun

                I am standing before your fantastic lily door

                I bring you Midgardian roses   Arcadian musk

                 Reputed cosmetics from the girls of heaven

                   Welcome me   fear not thy opened door

                     nor thy cold ghost's grey memory

                   nor the pimps of indefinite weather

                       their cruel terrestial thaw

                          Oppenheimer is seated

                       in the dark pocket of Light

                    Fermi is dry in Death's Mozambique

                         Einstein his mythmouth

                 a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid's head

             Let me in   Bomb   rise from that pregnant-rat corner

                nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world

                           O Bomb I love you

                 I want to kiss your clank   eat your boom

                    You are a paean   an acme of scream

                      a lyric hat of Mister Thunder

                        O resound thy tanky knees

                     BOOM   BOOM   BOOM   BOOM   BOOM

                      BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns

                    BOOM BOOM ye moons   ye stars BOOM

                     nights ye BOOM   ye days ye BOOM

                 BOOM BOOM ye winds   ye clouds ye rains

                    go BANG ye lakes   ye oceans BING

                     Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM

                       Ubangi BOOM   orangutang

                 BING BANG BONG BOOM   bee bear baboon

                        ye BANG ye BONG ye BING

                       the tail the fin the wing

                 Yes   Yes   into our midst a bomb will fall

                 Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching

          Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind

            Pinkbombs will blossom   Elkbombs will perk their ears

           Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look

                 Yet   not enough to say a bomb will fall

                  or even contend celestial fire goes out

                Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb

         that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born

            magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine   all beautiful

               and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires

                     fierce with moustaches of gold

You asked for it you got it.  See the nfpcam above.  I'm in a topless dance bar.  Total chaos.  Downing shots and beer.  In the blizzard of the season.  And the electricity in this club, Bada Bing, the "Bing" of LonelyLittleChic and Miss Anonymiss fame, is out.  Flat out.  Bummer for everyone but me.  I'm blogging!  And camming!   But nobody can see the cam.  Damn. The cam can't see nothing nobody either! 

Why I am I here?  Just a dare.  If the druggies here knew I was camming, they probably cut my throat.  I mean try.  Like it would be the first time

...yours truly with live investigative (un)coverage

CNN: “Residents of nine Muslim countries called the United States "ruthless and arrogant" in a new poll, with most describing themselves as "resentful" of the superpower”.

(Source: The Gallup Poll of 9,924 adults in nine Islamic countries. Number sampled in each country: Pakistan 2,043; Iran 1,501; Indonesia 1,050; Turkey 1,019; Lebanon 1,010; Morocco 1,000; Kuwait 790; Jordan 757; Saudi Arabia 754. Margin of error: +/-2 percentage points in Pakistan, +/-4 percentage points in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait; +/-3 percentage points in all other countries. Totals might not add up to 100% because of rounding or other responses not shown.  The interviews were conducted between December and January. The respondents were randomly selected and did not know a U.S. firm was sponsoring the poll.)

Well, the poll appears accurate.  And the “residents” appear representative of their countries’ populaces.  If so, I call each and every one of these countries (and their residents generally ) slovenly stupid, incredibly duped or self-duping, and in outrageous denial of established realities.

For instance, upon the subject of who is responsible:

Did Arab Groups carry out Septemeber 11 attacks?

Yes:  18%

No: 61%

Are they denying that Osama bin Laden is/was an Arab and head of an Arab group?  Or are they disputing Osama’s own bragging responsibility for the madness?  Or is it simply the kneejerk reaction of religious and nationalistic fanatics automatically denying any responsibility ever for anything that tries to link even the least pejorative thing to the sacredly unblemishable descriptor “Arab” ?  Or are we witnessing a popular phenomenon in countries which lack a free press but where religiously-generated nationalistic propaganda suppresses free thinking?  Fucking stupid idiots.

Now ponder this:

Were the September 11 attacks

Morally justified:  15%

Morally unjustified: 67%

Were the 15% here the same 18% in the first question?  In other words, do these 15% believe that the attacks were morally justified because they were carried out by Arabs.  If 50% believed that the attacks were carried out by Arabs, would the same 50% believe they were also morally justified?  There is no such correlative evidence here presented, but neither is it dismissed—so I speculate—but I don’t believe so wildly. 

Think about it: about 1 out of 6 of the people in these countries must have praised Allah and celebrated the destruction of 9-11 and probably would enjoy an even more gruesome sequel, too.  Such sick bastards in such phenomenally sizable magnitudes equal morbidly sick societies. 

There isn’t a religious society with national political power that doesn’t suck.  Never has been.  Never will be.  Welcome to the trans-millenial unshakeable ignorance of religiousity unleashed.   They make our "godless" communist enemies of the Cold War look, in hindsight, like prudent, thoughtful gentlemen.

Seven days running...seven days strong.

(Due to circumstances, I missed one, but the mentality was there.)

I can feel it coming...going to break through to the other side.  Going to wield the sword that's been strapped to my back for too long.

You say Goodbye....and I say Hello!

Now...some snippets from a recent chat (or "why from amidst my wardrobe, the straitjacket fits me best" ) :

i've no mind now, hon.  no sensibility.  i'm running in a psychic pack unseen to me.  and  yet I am unreflectingly alive.    Asking me to think, to choose, is like asking a newborn babe why it is at which hours he/she chooses to snooze.  Final answer: ZZZZZ....

eProps are pure tentacles of prurient exposure...best served up in pairs:
one expressing suborned submissiveness
the other, the dominance of BEWARE! :
I am a Xangan, too!  Hence...
whatever you do
bounces back off of me
and sticks to you!    )

you can't hold, you can't let go--neither can I.  those options are matters of choice,  and I can only howl impulsively...perhaps for eternity...howl long is a howl??!!

I want death by Xanga and to be buried under a pyre of eProps that will burn eternal!  ha ha ha ha )

but i'm just a howler....best to let me be

i respond to everything
most instinctively

mmmooooonn

the ways of man make little sense
and so with humanity I do dispense

howwwwlllll!!!

mooon...full...howwl!!!!!

hey..it's a full moon...i'm insane...going to howl )

Did your parents ever scold you about playing with ants?  Don’t play with ants!!!

Maybe it was just a boy-thing when I was a kid.  Incinerating ants with magnifying glasses; having ant wars where you’d take a hostage ant from one colony and drop it onto another’s anthole and watch the torture proceed; or placing an ant on a popsicle stick and floating it down a post-torrent’s curbside gutter stream towards an ominously-sucking sewer cover. 

Had I grown up within a strict Jainist religious tradition (they are known to avoid any activities destructive of insect life and to even foster insect hospitals), I’d probably never have practiced such juvenile myrmecide, but may well have rather grown up a founding father of PETI (People for Ethical Treatment of Insects):

Do you realize how many bugs you can kill on a simple drive of 60 miles? Thousands. And you heartlessly scrape them off your windshield. Think about the poor little bug families who lost a mother or father because you chose to go the speed limit.

Studies have shown that at speeds of less than 35 mph bugs will blow past your car, and survive. At speeds greater than 35 mph they splatter.

Stop the carnage. Save the bugs. Lower the speed limits on our interstates to 35 mph.

 So maybe cops today are so tolerant of speeding because they approve of anti-insect rage?!

And if you’re an enlightened driver, maybe you’ll swerve to spare the butterflies but slay the mosquitoes?  Or spare the mosquitoes, but slay the ants?

This latter strategy was precisely the strategy employed by French medicine during the early days in building the Panama Canal across the Isthmus of Panama.  At the end of the 19^th century, the best and the brightest of French business visionaries and engineers had been commissioned and sent to Panama to construct the “Canal Interoceanique,” but they encountered two deadly, formidable foes: yellow fever and malaria.  French doctors were wise enough to theorize that insects were transmitting the disease to man, but when they looked about for the likely culprit, they dismissed the tiny jungle mosquito (“how could anything so small kill a great big man?”) and instead focused upon the any number of varieties of jungle ants, some of which (army ants) were known to cut paths even through the densest jungle.  (And I can confirm that—as I once watched a swarming colony of army ants cut through a six-foot high field of Panama grass—and, no, it wasn’t Red ),

Desperate and acting fast upon this notion, in one particular French hospital set up to care for the feverishly-stricken, doctors and nurses placed pots of water (cheap) under all four bedposts of every hospital bed to baffle the ubiquitously wandering “man-killing” ants.  And baffle them they did !  Ants drowned like the Egyptians trying to follow the Jews across the temporarily-parted Red Sea.  One related spin-off “nuisance” was that the pots of water also served as brooding pools for the tiny no-see-um mosquitoes.  But the French were willing to live with that “minor annoyance.”  After all, what was a little itchy-squiter bite compared to the deadly malarial or yellow fever suck of those nasty ant-fucks?!

Wrong!  As everyone now knows, it was precisely the tiny buzzing squiters that were decimating the French in droves.  That particular French hospital, by the way, experienced nearly 100% mortality—duh!

So, are you prepared to trust your doctor today?  Did you say sure?!

Well, keep in mind the sign in an autobody repair shop that read  “Good, Cheap, Fast—Pick Two”  and then read this:

Before the invention of anesthesia, speed was a highly regarded trait in a surgeon.  Dr. Robert Liston of London was among the fastest.  But, speed comes with some cost.  In one particular operation, Liston killed three people.  The patient actually survived, but later died of gangrene.  During the operation, Liston accidentally cut of the fingers of his surgical assistant, who soon died from an infection.  Liston even managed to slash through the coattails of a colleague who was observing the operation - he was so sure that his vital organs had been punctured that he died of fright! 

Source:  Oops!  by Paul Kirchner, 1996, Rhino Records

… Just remember that ant.
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant.  (1)
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant.  (2)
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant.  (3)

   —Sammy Cahn

Warrior’s Darkside
Conforming for its own sake is a sin.


I need to get back to battling terrorists.
 Lest I become one.  Or maybe I have already.
Even if they’re (we’re) hiding in caves on Mars.
“If we’re going to die, we’re going to die on my terms.”
Sentient, intrepid, contending, empowered, strong.
"If we’re going to die, come on, let's get it on."
Nothing wrong with going out together.
It’s a lot easier than dealing
with the drugs of undoing, 
with disappearing lovers, 
and disappointing whores,
disenchanting friends,
and the strangulation
of world corporate organization
defining me (us) as
mere means to an
economic end
ground 
zero 

Ever notice on the weekends, especially Saturdays, the general fall-off in blogging?  Sure you have.  I’ve quantified it statistically before, and believe that the phenomenon is so regular and obvious that I won’t even bother to do so now. 

Today’s question is why?  In one sense, it seems counterintuitive.  You’d think that weekends would be when more peeps have more leisure on their hands  and that leisure and blogging would be correlates :: more leisure=more blogging.  But blogging’s reduced.  Peak is typically mid-day during the week.

Three explanatory factors for the diminished activity occur to me:

1) There are peeps who blog primarily from school (labs, library).  In class.  Between classes.  A lot of schools will have faster internet access (leased lines) and it’s smart to take advantage of them.  And faster means more activity.  But of course…there is no *school* on the weekends.  Also, blogging moms and dads may have to watch their kids more attentively on the weekends.  Or may set the weekends aside for *family activities*.

2) There are peeps who blog relentlessly from work.  Again, the opportunity for access may be a rationale.  Or the avoidance of work responsibilities.  “Hey, look, I’m getting paid for blogging!”  Just don’t tell the boss.  Since the work week is typically Monday-Friday, weekends bring a fall-off in job-blogging.

3) Since the population of Xanga is relatively youthful (82% less than 25 years of age, 32% less than 15 years of age) and hence, largely unmarried, peeps are too busy living, thrashing, breathing, dating, elating, diffusing, escaping = partying on the weekend.  Weekdays are *back-to-school, back-to-work* and back to a more bloggable regimen.

Anyway, the above are just suggestions, not definitive findings.

But speculate this:  Of those who have blogged from work (and there are, from time-to-time, a good number of us ), how much comparable worth ($$ hourly wage, salary paid) do you think has been diverted furtively into Xanga in the past year?  My wild guess: about $500,000 (equivalent to 400 peeps a day spending one-half hour of work time at $10 an hour) .

Wireless is the destiny of the WWW.  The World Wireless Web.  Ever hear of the upcoming wireless technolgy called *G3*, the third-generation wireless standard?  Well, Americans may be the last to hear.

It seems that this much-touted technology, which at its outset promises to enable mobile phones with built-in camera and video screens capable of data rates up to 64K (faster than current analog modem access) and wireless data modems for laptops, and other mobile devices with transmission speeds of up to 384K (think cable modem/DSL), will appear sooner in Europe and even parts of the Third World before roll-out in America.  Why?  Because America was historically at the forefront in laying landline cabling  and has so much of an investment in the older infrastructure that it is reluctant to sink those costs before their amortization.  On the other hand, much of Europe and Asia "tech-ed up" later and found wireless a cheaper, more reliable solution than an endless proliferation of physical lines.

How many of you have a cell phone?  *sees hordes of raised hands*  But how many of you have your cell phone as your primary sevice?  *watches hands fall away*  Approximately 18% of Americans have cellular service as their primary service whereas upwards of 80% of the peeps in some European and third world Asian countries claim so.  Hence, the rollout of the latest G3 technology will inevetiably occur first overseas where the largest market claims stakes.  Consequently, most of the great initial breaktroughs in the World Wireless Web will be non-American (I didn't say un- ).

How good will it be (yes, it is still a promise, but...)? 

Currently G3 is rated at 384 Kbps but will boast speeds up to 10 Mbps (think LAN speeds) in near future.

It will provide instanteous pictures, video, graphics, voice and data thru wireless and satellite networks worldwide.

Meanwhile, the nfpcam will struggle along at 14.4K, daring to invade tiddy bars and cemetaries just because it can

Create

Occasionally, xTools promotes a *comment* to blog status.  *How the hell did that happen? * Oh, well...

Though James seems to yearn for uncritical unanimity over there, here--anything goes...forever in the tantric throes of critical examination (self- and otherwise).  A-ha!

*Let's see...should I create a new blog or merely enhance a comment, "blog it up"...hrmmm...??*

There are some patents given for "enhancements" but most patents are given for "inventions".  In as much as law IS semantics, that's a harsh distinction.  But one that seems to hold up the underbelly of creative efforts.

*Nothing new under the sun.*  Except that observation was new the first time it was thought/spoken. 

And the sun? Was it once itself not new?  And the galaxy it spun from was once new too?   The spirit of Gaia dancing in the stars is Goddess Invention herself and not merely a wearer of old hats employed to *dress up* or enhance the universe.

Of course, energy *is neither created nor destroyed*.  Hence, merely enhanced?  Yes, most systems are entropic--endlessly recombinant of worlds, worlds "revolving like ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots," but destined, nonetheless, for an effusive doomsday. Yet we find rare systems, like Life, which appear otherwise, to diminish entropy, doing so not merely through permutation and elaboration but apparently through a perforate local infusion of grand creation itself.  Anew.

A diamond polished is an enhancement on one in the rough.  But when life arose from the inorganic, was that merely an enhancement of *old stuff*?  Some say yes.  Some say no.  But the distinction is more than semantics. It's a fundamental outlook.  It speaks of the Force.  Final answer. he he.

he he.

(chorus) Who stole the cookie out of the cookie jar?

xxreaderxx stole the cookie out of the cookie jar!

(xxreaderxx) Not me.

(chorus) Yes you.

(xxreaderxx) Can't be.

(chorus) Then who?

..Refrain..(next suspect)

(thanks to anonymiss for planting this uneradicably in my brain)

To hell with the calendar—it must be spring ‘cause I’m pumped and ready to run.  Who wants to run with me?

After a huge wintertime hiatus of almost not running at all, I’m hot on the path again, ready to hit the streets and let my feet carry me onward to anywhere.  No, I speak not in metaphors—I’m about to pound the pavement and resume my second equivalent of circumnavigating the globe (accumulated mileage now in excess of 25,000).

I don’t know precisely why I got lulled into non-running quiescence, but  yesterday afternoon for one brief shining moment, despite the fact that I was  embattled with fatigue and looking at the world with tired eyes,  interiorly I visualized in a flash the exuberance of youth cavorting in mayhem down the sullen wintry street that I was driving along.  And then once again at 6:30 PM, when I gazed at a clock and my tired mind told me that “the day grows late,” I flashed back to those days of my very own  when at the very same time I’d be running just the second of three 5-mile daily jaunts.   “Damn this man,”  I swore.  Cursing, bitching to myself…”to fatigue, never suborn, never submit.”   And then…then…I awoke!   My feet grew happy just envisioning the run that I was to run this morning.  And when I ran this morning (about 2 miles) and got done, I ran two more “victory laps” around my block (about 1.5 miles).  Now here’s the quest: to run everyday starting with 3 miles and working up to 6.  Then by mid-March to start running weekend mini-marathons (13 miles), working myself back into shape to run the Cleveland marathon on April 28th.  I’m adamant—going to do it—may Mercury and Hermes bear witness and allow my feet to lead the way!  Now whose game to run the marathon with me?  Or must my long-distance running re-embrace its ever present friend—lonliness?!   Whatever.  I’m off…!

The Blue Guide

in the grip of unmotion
with less than a thought in my mind
i sense the dark of an inner ocean
never known to time.

i have no being there:
there is no relation—nothing far, nothing near;
just the darkness within darkness
that most men love to fear.

i could lose it all, crawl
blindly feeling my way along
surrendering substance to the subtle
seduction to never have or belong.

o, why have i forsaken me,
embracing the whorl of nothingness
over certain certainties,  seeking
…the conscience of a blackened thing?

yet the world is fine as it tracks time
—though i’m no longer part of it.
and sans moi it seems nothing’s changed:
the advantage of playing my small bit.

It's just after 2 PM EST and I'm off on a one hour tour of Lakeview Cemetary.  Feel free to join me and my webcam as I stroll about the enchanted barrens of the dead on this rather pleasant day (for February) here in Northeastern Ohio.

And for those especially celebrating President's Day, here's a view of the James A. Garfield Monument (mausoleum in the basement).

Post-jaunt: The outing was excellent, though the cam acted up enough to occasionally befuddle me and hamper my attempt to capture all of interest.  I especially regret losing a cute series of camshots of some girls I ran into that were also taking photos.  I guess the excitement was too much life for a cemetary. lol

Here's a select review from the land of hush:

 I am a communist
(?!?)

Since the real Winter Olympics are awarding simultaneous gold medals for the same event to various teams, should we not, in the same spirit, demand that Xangalympics give everyone Premium for Life for free??!!  lmao

Actually, I think they should!  Why?  Because the boards lie.  I know for a fact, that at least one and probably at least two new accounts joined Xanga here recently on my recommendation and credited me.  Yet, when I display my *game board*, it boasts squat.  Hell.  I'm changing my nationality to Canadian.

So is this *Skins* a new game--a golf tournament?? lol  Actually, I'm dying to learn if *skins* really give us: 1) more freedom--*total freedom*--as bannered, 2) the same freedom repackaged and made available in differing flavors to the masses, or 3) introduce subtle cutomizing constraints based upon a more structured template only appearing initially as more freedom by offering variations on a theme?  I know this sounds like techno-babble--and it is!--but inquisitive minds like seanmeister and wave_function should let us know!

Now: what I'd really like to see on Xanga is a newly featured list of the UNpropped/UNcommented--posts older than a day but less than a week which no one has left any trace of visiting.  I'd bet, I'd just bet that there are enough peeps here on Xanga of goodwill, to regularly check such a list, weigh the posts' merits, and comment and prop as appropriate.  Admit it: the current *Featured Content* list is a skew towards a largely narrow, reoccuring group of popular Xangaroos.  And while that, in itself, isn't bad, you have to realize, that a great many other never-too-popular bloggers eventually just wither away unnoticed, mocked by Xanga's unfullfilled promise of *interactivity*-- a progression of *0*s day after day after day.  And some of these who have left unnoticed or undernoticed have been truly brilliant, but were disenfranchised by virtual exclusion from the *Featured Content * list and a lack of prop/comment socialization.

So what I'd propose would be two new lists: 1) The totally UNpropped/UNcommented posts older than a day but less than a week, and 2) a Day-Old Featured Content list which ranks and features--for 24 hours--those posts that remained unpropped on the first day of the post, but got some attention thereafter (days 2 through 7)--purportedly due to the institution of the first new list above. (So that if you get listed on list #1 and get propped, you automatically move to list #2 for 24 hours).

The benefit of the second list would be to give new continuing exposure (24 hours) to those previously underexposed posts which now show accumulative worth in the estimation of other peeps.

Granted, these *lists* probably have their faults and weaknesses, too, inherited, no doubt, from the whole concept of "propping".  No *featuring* will ever be perfect.  But I'd bet my blog, nonetheless, that these or similar sorts of underdog lists would substantially enhance the retention in Xanga of those teetering along the subliminal margins of noticeability.   And that, from both a vital sociological and vital business perspective, would be a very, very good thing.

Happy Birthday Roxy !!!!

She's riding four horses today!!!!

Born under the year of the Horse, she now rides a quartet.

*4*

the complete number,

according to Jung.

The Trinity + Mary = 4

Happy Happy Happy Happy

! ! ! !

If you've seen this bear...

or any bear even remotely resembling it, please call your local FBI office immediately with the following information:

*appearance
*whereabouts
*activities it engaged in
*apparent co-conspirators
*immigrant status

News Flash: The FBI has issued an alert to 350 law enforcement agencies in the southwest and Salt Lake City for potential Valentine teddy bear bombs after a suspicious transaction at a Wal-Mart last month....The FBI said a clean-shaven male, possibly of Middle Eastern descent, purchased nine Valentine teddy bears, 20 inches tall, and 14 canisters of propane, 9 inches tall, small enough to fit inside the teddy bears.

Also be prepared to spit and take immediate cover should you encounter a box of terrorist chocolates packed with gooey nougat centers consisting of delicious C4 plastic.

Happy V-day via Xanga, y'all

In celebration of the Xangalympics spamfest, I bring you the original, founder-spamming, notorious Bianca Broussard, now with an ascetainable identity.  Not only that...omg...she's a he cause she has a wang! :

www.biancabroussard.com

Registrant:
  Wang Chuan Sheng Q9034785@ms7.hinet.net 886 917557860
  Wang Chuan Sheng
  2F, No. 30-2 Kun Min Street
  Taipei,Taipei,Chinese Taipei 108

Are you getting shunned, dissed, or ignored for Valentine's Day?  Before you commit a crime of passion, go to www.shoot-it.org to perfect your skills!

It's great being a guy if you work in an office.  I mean, I'm wearing precisely the same outfit I wore to work yesterday, and no one gives a damn.  If anything, remaining identically dressed from one day to the next is seen as a virtuous expression of constancy and steadfastness for a guy.  But if you're a gal, watchout!  Wearing the same outfit will get you tagged as an unthinkably drab, unfashionable neanderthal hussy-bitch.  This, at least, was the sentiment a girl in my workplace just related to me--ya agree, disagree?

When nothings clicking on Val's Day, it's time for the guys to get together:

Dear Stephen, I hope that you have been well, as I have, and that we can see each other soon and maybe visit our "club."  

I have attached 7 Microsoft word files to update the web site with.  If this could be done at your earliest convenience it would be greatly appreciated.

Are you free this Wed or Thurs evening to get together? I can also then pay you your semi annual $500 and we can toss down some beers.    Thanks, and all the best.

Dan

oooo -- dryadsage has a knockout read on Val's Day.  I myself, will express my own heart (choose one) a) -felt, b) -less sentiment later...

Damn the cam!   I had to take the cam down yesterday due to maintenance on its server site.  It's back now--but hey, stop knocking my bird--that parrot is a mighty pecker of which I am most fond!

I just noticed that when I highlight ( left click hold-down and select ) the entire *xanga* text in my last post, I bear an eerie similarity to the silhouette of Darth Vader.  Hey--I like that!  LOL

btw, to avoid the damnable accolade that I have too much time on my hands (I don't), here's the website that assisted me in my image-to-text creation: http://www.text-image.com/

No More Mr. Nice Guy?

First off, who cares about how many damn medals the *U.S*. has won/is winning in the Winter Olympics and whether or not we break the old record countwise?  The real truth is that the *U.S.* hasn’t won any of them. Individual athletes and teams earn their own recognition for their own accomplishments and, if there were no country designations for tallying purposes, their accomplishments would in no way be diminished.  Granted, it’s certainly great to represent the U.S., get backing based on that representation, and be grandly patriotic whether winning or not.  But to descend into a counting competition with other countries to me is a trite as watching the damn Xangalympics Leaderboard—which, by the way, has never worked.

Which leads me to second off…  I don’t want no stinking boxes.  Not Xangalympics.  Not Current Site Data.  Not even a New Weblog Entry box.  I want circles.  I want ellipses.  I want spheres.   I want glass ceilings to gaze at the stars.  Fuck those little boxes—all made of ticky-tacky.

Which brings me to third off.  No, there is no segue to third off.  It’s just it’s own goddam Bronze Medal—not.  I don’t like the blog concept-word *flame* (excepting the symbolism in Raw_Flame’s name).  It’s as nebulous as the concept of Original Sin and as relative as the notion of *common courtesy*.  What’s a *common courtesy* among pirates?  Smiling too much or being too genial with too many pats on the back will end you up overboard.

So while most were softly commiserating with Buffalo about his anticipated self-departure I offered him, in his words, some “stern realism” :

You need to rage against the predators with fire in your eyes and defiance in your heart. Your enemies should see you and be sick. They should faint under the cloak of your shadow--and not for any imagined fluttering prospect of potential lovemaking.

For a moment, put your physical prowess and appearance aside as aspects of the outward warrior, and look within yourself to discover and embrace the indominatable soul-self which once as the "dark knight" so courageously prevailed in worthy causes. This warrior within must now do for itself, must act on its own behalf, as once it acted to save and shelter others.

The world badly needs warriors of you prowess and multi-faceted potential. But all's lost if you alone don't chose your ground, make your stand, and slay all the demons that have gathered around.

Buffalo could have just ignored my advice.  If he were a self-accomplished yuppie professional-type, he probably would have considered it a conceited insult on my part.  But he took it to heart.   Words aren’t always meant for the mind.

"Yeah…yeah…that’s no flame," you’re saying.  Of course not—as it was taken.

Lately, though I’ve become a snatch ornery and a bit strident about a few high-profile posts I’ve come across which I’ve considered raucously arrogant and intellecutally offensive .  In the past, I’d generally just move on.  Move on back into my own little sphere.  Fuck that. From now on, when I’m moved within to strongly disagree, I’m going on the warpath.  And part of that warpath may be the blogpath. The way I see it: If you want to blog and make comments possible, you have granted me potential comment-turf.  If I use that turf to stand and disagree, opine disharmoniously, or advocate satanically—don’t worry about my strategy.  Just decide if you just want to let it go, delete my comment, or respond. 

I’ve been a warrior all my life.  Now it’s time to live again.

It is uncharacteristic of me to share a funny on my blog.  Peeps like DaP are best at it, so mostly I leave it to the pros   But it was just as uncharacteristic of agrochick78 to send me this in the first place, and it heightened and brightened my day, so here goes:

READ THE STORY BEFORE YOU LOOK AT THE PHOTO

This should make you smile this morning!
 This is one of those classic occurrences in life that just seemed to go wrong even when the intentions were so honorable.

A class of elementary students started a class project to make a ceramic pot with some sort of plant in it to take home. They wanted to have a plant that was easy to take care of, so it was decided to use cactus plants.

The students were given green ware pottery in the style of a clown plant pot. They painted them with glaze and had them professionally fired at class outing so they could see the process. It was great fun. The cactus plants grew nicely in the clown pots, but unfortunately the children were not allowed to take them home. The cactus plants were removed and a small ivy was grown to replace them. The children were then allowed to take them home. The teacher said cactus seemed like a GOOD idea at the time.......

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T.S.T.B.

(see comment)

I am wild.  And I'm out here.

It's not a thought.

It's not a thought.

But an outlook.

How else can one get high?

Followed by an (unnecessary) afterthought.

I've been intently watching the Xangalympics (or should I say Winter Xangalympics--meaning we can expect Summer ones too?). 

But why are all the events downhill?! LOL

But, just for the hell of it, I decided to "engage."  Got some porno emails out of my junk mail, copied the addresses from the header, and ...ah! so that's how Bianca felt!

But just think: I could be inviting someone of the caliber, on the very order of the next xxreaderxx a-blog-shaking to Xanga.  Now that would be too cool!

So there I sat a Bianca-baby trying to make Xangalympic babies.  Life's hell when there's no proper outlet for one's sex drive!

But what if I recruited the next zoodom or benevolent_mitch or Gudkarma to our community?  Damn. I'd better stop now.

...So my XangaCam actually works pretty well when it's on.  I'v put a timestamp up so that you can see if it's on--even if there's no change ( how exciting--lmao ).  I've actually walked and driven online around the downtown streets with it, taken it to work, taken it into a bar, shopping, etc.  Either nobody has noticed (the cam is very inconspicuous) or nobody has had the nerve to ask me why I'm wired like a wiseguy. 

So what do you think?  Should I take it skydiving, to a cell meeting of the local chapter of Al Qaeda, or to a booby bar next?!

Happy birfday virgilmvx.   Or is it your barfday?  I imagine as you go about celebrating the former with copious amounts of beer, the latter will grow increasingly more relevant.  Unless, of course, you over-copiously imbibe, in which case all will seem happily irrelevant and maybe even irreverant.

So let the Games begin?  Xangalympics?  No!  Everybody go throw prop beads at virgilmvx and we thinks that perhaps he will flash verboodles at us!

Will It Ever Be The Same?

Some time ago, even before I enlisted as a psychic operant in Col. Ollie North’s Central American Brigade (I’m allowed to reveal this since no one will believe it.  And a truth unbelieved is even more equivocating than explicit deceit), I was, perhaps, a bit too wayward and impulsive.  Ah—but the times permitted.  Yes, indeed.  How they did.

So when the mood moved me, I often took wing.  Sometimes literally.  Always solitary.  Often surreptitiously.

Like just getting on a plane and flying to New York, Broadway to catch a performance of David Bowie in the play Elephant Man on Halloween.  Or hopping on a flight in mid-winter to cruise down to Orlando to go to Disney World??  Hell, no—just to run in the sultry air on Florida highways in the middle of the night.  Or catching a Red-Eye Midnight flyer to San Diego, again in mid-winter, and again to escape the absence of Spring, to see my sis (ahanna).

O that Midnight flyer—what a trip!  Those were the days (ha ha ha)…when you could still race to the airport, get there 10 minutes before the flight, and literally sprint down the concourse to the boarding gate.  And that I did.  Then underway, I grabbed a window seat so that, once above the cloud canopy of dreary winter, I could study the stars. ( I loved and still love  starlight and constellations.  I used to get up a 4:30 AM when I lived in the southern highlands of Arizona just so I could jog out under the brilliant display of the Milky Way.) 

Airborne and halfway across the country, I saw them: lights in the sky against the stars but darting around like woodland faeries.  UFOs—yes!.  I knew right away.  And I even called the cute brunette stewardess who was attending me over to have a look.  Somewhat incredulous at first, she decided, nonetheless, to humor me and leaned over my lap to look out the window.  “Look!” , I declared.  “Where?” , she queried.   “There…”, and I pointed.  And she gazed and beheld for a good half-minute then said “Oh my God—I’m going to tell the pilot!’ 

So she hurried herself off toward the cockpit only to return a few minutes later to inform me that the pilot wanted to see me.  Was I in trouble?  Me? Never!  Hell, no…

The stewardess accompanied me to the front and knocked on the cockpit door.  Without hesitation, the pilot opened it quite eager to inform me that, he too, had spotted the elusive lights.  And so, by radio reports, had some other pilots.  And, no, no one had any idea what they were.  And then, inviting me in, he shared the view through the cockpit windshield with me.  And there they were: three UFOs skirmishly prancing away off into the distance.  The stewardess’ eyes were as big as full moons (or were those her heaving breasts?!).  And then the pilot informed us that there were indications of a storm ahead and that I would need to take my seat again.

So the flight couldn’t have been more exciting, right?!  Until upon disembark I discovered I’d have to go through a screening by Customs. Whhhaaat??  Oh yes, the airport was *International* and screenings were customary.  I nearly shit.  So I stood in line and when it came my time the Customs officer asked me to open my carryon case.  Oh…alright…   First thing he saw: a 4-inch bronze Buddha smiling up at him.  He then moved that aside to encounter 10 packs of Indian incense which, even unlit, wafted fragrantly.   Moving that aside, he further encountered a well-worn Tarot deck waiting for a reading.  Dare he go further??—I hoped not.  But sure enough, he pushed the Tarot deck aside to reveal an intricately-inlaid  exotically-gilded *cigarette* case, which, since I never smoked cigarettes, probably contained something on the order of rolled aromatic hallucinogenic herb. 

Was I busted?  The Customs officer stopped, shook his head, waved his hands in a sort of handwashing dis-involvement and said: “I’ve seen enough.  Get the hell out of here.”

“Yes sir!”  I acknowledged.  And then just thought to myself, wisely without a pronouncement: “And the space visitors thank you too!”

So what are the chances, post 9-11, of ever pulling off such madcap again?

Grounded.  Like the airlines directly after 9/11.  Me.  I ain't going nowhere.  It's beyond my control. Really.  And it ssauks, even sucks.  Due to circumstances, I can't travel for the indefinite future.  No more than this way. Or that.  20  miles.  How many feet is that?  How many dollar bills laid end-to-end?

Because it sucks because.  Because there are Xanga entities I ache to meet.  Real love live Xangeroos oo-oo.  Some of whom I've met before, some for whom I'm still cruising for that eprop bruising.  I might as well be doing the minuet in 18th century China with bonded feet.  Ha ha--Mozart you gotta know I love you .

Hey, but someday somebody.  Gonna wax this world.  Orbit it at exactly 13 feet off the ground.  No slam dunks baby.  Hugging giraffes' necks as I pass them by. Yea!!

Until then, all I can say is, why don't ya come up and see me sometime?!  Or I can canvass the range: 20 mile.  Radius of latitude/longitude 41.52 81.68.  Quite deadly within the inner circle.  Quite lively too.

I am the GrayTest!

and you...you are a complimentary mint under the pillow.

(now read this as if you are saying it, because, you see, I am the mint.

Don't Bring That Damn Box Back!

I know I have a lot of other gizmos whirling on my site, but yesterday, as an experiment, I added back "The Box" and it was the bale of sodden straws that broke my blog's back. 

Hell, I even had to reboot a couple of times to get on to my own site.  I almost blew myself off (*fuck that NFP*) because of the delay. 

Oh yeah...sink my ship.  Bring back the box.  Point the gun to my head and I'll pull the trigger.

Does Xanga need a Hall of Flame?

Looking back upon some of my old posts and recalling the nascent birth pangs of Xanga  in the century, nay millennium, long gone, I get just a bit sentimental about the true Xanga frontiersfolk who fell by the way. 

Jewels (blog now vacant) was an angel—her spirit was as elevating as her lupus-like illness was consumptive. 

And I loved StandsWithAFist (blog now vacant)  —a preciously-talented beautiful young thing who quit Xanga to reclaim her   

Real

Life.

And, of course, none who knew her can ever forget Wildheart (blog extant)–her fire, her spirit, and her battle with cancer to the near end are recorded for all to read. 

But I also wistfully recall the very opposite of these beauties—the veritable Beasts, the Flamers.  Inane controversies always swirled around the then-seemingly insane harshness of the self-appointed early Flames of Xanga: urnightmare, Honjinashi, ournightmare, and eramthginru (urnightmare backwards!)  

Does anyone know who these personas really were?  What drove them to such perfection in their menacing arts??

urnightmare took Xanga by firestorm and I clashed with him intrepidly (fighting fire with fire) for I considered him an anti-hero flaming Xanga indiscriminately far and wide.  In the end, his blog was silenced for Violations of the Terms of Use, but not before he left me this :

Dear Steve, Please except my humble apologies, you are really a god to me.

My own wetdream.

Posted 2/17/2001 at 4:15 am by urnightmare -

Yes, urnightmare, I am finally prepared to accept apology…and nominate you for the Hall of Flame!

Why not?  It looks like the Xangalympics are about to unfold, so why not have a Downhill Flaming event and go for the Gold?  Ah…but I rabblerouse, when all I really mean to do is reminesce…

Honjinashi was equally as virulent as urnightmare and nearly as cryptic as ournightmare who flamed with great selectivity.  I think that eramthginru was actually urnightmare born again—literally, like one of the Backwards (certain greatly-feared Apache medicine men who defiantly rode into battle backwards on their horses and flaunted disdain for conventions of all sorts.)

They flamed, they burnt, they burned-out brilliantly.  Kind of like dangerously effusive and fizzling fireworks going POOF in the night. 

Hall of Flame!  Hall of Flame, says I.  (of course, with a sprinkler system installed meeting or exceeding current fire prevention codes)

Now who would you like to see in a Xanga Hall of Flame (ha ha--be careful: a nomination may make you eligible! )

Why Men Have It 'Easier'

(or why I'll never have it easy again after publishing this comment?)

Liz_A in a most recent blog expressed some dismay and distress about the shadows of aging growing longer.  Yet beyond her personal impressions, she suggested that culture is two-faced in treating the aging of men and women differently:

In short, I think that we have this perception that men age gracefully, and women just get old. Somehow it doesn't seem fair.

Exactamente.  But... (my reply, here slightly embellished but true to the original spirit I intended):

Both men and women remain as sexually capable (performance-wise) as each other at comparable ages, but men remain, in general , sexually potent longer than women.  No definitive menopause for men.  Hence, aging for men doesn't appear culturally as drastic a correlate to sexual potentcy as it does for women.  When you look at an "old woman", you can be practically certain that she's incapable of biologically sponsoring offspring anymore.  But when you look at an "old man", you can't make that sure bet.  This, I believe, is the biological underpinning of the (fair or unfairly) bent cultural rant.

Statistics can lie.  Appearances can deceive.  And culture sure can suck.  Yet Ronald Reagan (aged 91--his birthday is today--and he's the oldest living President ever) might still be capable of impregnating a nubile fertile teenage babe (regardless of whether he'd be mentally competent to do so). But for someone the likes of Nancy Reagan--with regards to this issue of sexual potency only -- would you hedge whether the sun has actually set on her procreative chances with some horny young gigolo?

Hormones aside, old vs. gracefully aged??  I don't personally make the distinction by gender.  It's all in the mind, right?  Just remember Mr. Jingles from the Green Mile--he was ancient!!

Coming Soon?

Boxes??

Boxes Coming Back???

Yes, xxreaderxx

You're Box is Back!!!

Check it out up above.
(caveat: IE browsers only)

Thank You and Goodnight

Important Update: I swear, I swear, I swear that I had NO idea that the seanmeister had done precisely the same thing here  earlier.  Now I'm terribly frightened--I'm beginning to think like him!

Wormholes in a wireless world.

webcam-->laptop-->socket modem-->cellular phone-->satellite-->ftp host-->here (virtually for IE browsers or there under *More Stuff* for Netscape)

1) dial up.
2) start cam.
3) load laptop into targus backpack.
4) secure cell phone in pack also, keep cam in hand or clipped to vest pocket.
5) hit the road.

Remember Stephen King's Stand and the character TrashCanMan. 

 I'm about to become Xanga's WebCamMan.

When I pay too much attention to technology, I get creatively insipid in a non-technological sense.  But really, there's no reason for that.  I've never understood why someone going for a slam dunk on a basketball court can't be composing a sonnet at the same time.  Maybe they are!  Or why a heart surgeon doing a bypass can't be visually recalling last night's lovemaking?  Or why a soldier running through potentially dangerous jungle muck can't be mentally studying for an organic chemistry test?  Why do we think we must remained focused on but one accomplishment in order to maximize our attainment? 

My single-second multi-tasking fantasy for today: slicing Osama bin Laden's neck with a dagger in one hand and throwing beads to a Mardi Gras babe with the other while singing "hi ho, hi ho...it's off to work we go" and visualizing world peace while yet anticipating some naughty for tonight.

Well. I've just gone a little techno-nuts by rigging this web-cam thingy to feed live ten second bursts of stills to my Xanga page.

The first problem is that unless you have a version of Internet Explorer, you won't see it.  Netscrape can't handle the cascade of dynamic html involved.  But you still could go here.  Of course, with Netscrape, you won't see my LiveJournal insert or my Xanga Tetris link insert or my whorling galactic center black hole tunnel, either.  hrmmm.  Maybe, it's a blessing!

Second problem is that with so many feeds (see above) from contingent servers, if one of them goes down, then that dependent content fails and this page may load slower.  So is there nothing like all eggs in one basket?

Third problem is now that I set up a cam thingy, peeps might expect to see me anytime.  But I can't be *there* all the time--just mostly early morning, late evenings.  (But I am going to take it on the road and see how it works via satellite uplink--mobile cam--ha.)

So I'm just trying to keep the envelope bulging by pushing it.  But now that all the sane stuff is out of the way, perhaps it's time for something crazy?

Or maybe I should just get back to good plain old blogging once again?

A few simple Groundhog questions:

Why does light bring continued darkness?
And darkness, supposed light?

On February 2nd we find the coincidence of many holidays: the Christian Candlemas (Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary) Day, the modern Groundhog's Day, the pagan celebrations of rebirth (Imbolc and Oimelc), and St Brigit's Day (Ireland). And they're all related! There's a re-aligned tie-in, too, of the Roman holiday of Lupercalia (modern St. Valentine's Day) since the Feast of Purification and Groundhog' Day were celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox calendar and some Ozark folks on Feb. 14th , and many pagans consider the current Candlemas Day (Feb. 2), the Feast of Lights, to be a pagan version of St. Valentine's Day anyways. So confusing! (For a stunning analysis of the all these intricate holiday tie-ins, check out Candlemas: The Light Returns)

But back to riddle at hand....

According to an old English song:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Go Winter, and come not again.

According to an old Scotch couplet:

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be twa (two) winters in the year.

Why so? Because Candlemas day is a cross-quarter day in the pagan calendar, six weeks between the solstices and equinoxes. And according to pagan beliefs, the cross-quarter days can be used as 'inverse' weather predictors, whereas the normal quarter-days are used as 'direct' weather predictors.

So face it: Punxsutawney Phil is a pagan (naughty groundhog pagan!) utilizing the presence (or absence) of sunshine to create a detectable shadow (or not) from which he inversely makes a prediction! No sunshine, (no shadow), winter's at an end! But sunshine (and shadow), six weeks more does dismality send!

(btw, I'm not an official *pagan*; moreso, as a meteorological daredevil in Panama during my, hrm, *jungle days*, I didn't miss any forecasting tricks--even pagan ones!)

I am haunted.  It's strange.  Everywhere I look I see Valentine people.

You know, the traditionally-shaped Valentine heart  

doesn’t even resemble the true human heart.  Not even close.

I once had a genius/comrade/friend/renegade in college who as a post-graduate never enrolled in classes but merely sat in without paying.  He had earned a bachelor’s degree in biology once upon a time and though he could have postured professionally amongst the supreme intellectual crème in his field, he decided instead to just drive a cab.  Go figure.   Anwyay,  it turned out that he almost always (except when I happened to share a class with him—he he)  proved himself the most worthy student in any class he participated in.  His attendance was impeccable, his class participation was enormous, and he always had a new theory or insight upon any matter at hand. 

One Valentine’s Day, he advanced the notion that the traditional *Valentine's heart*, though verbally suggestive of “giving one’s loving heart to another” was really graphically more appropriately portraying the act of a female baboon presenting her behind, bright red when in oestrous, to a male as an invitation to courtship.  The message in doing so being “stick it in, baboon boy, I’m bright and tight.”

Well, you know what?  I’ve never done baboons, but I think maybe he was right!  The next Valentine’s heart you see could really be the flushed moon of a female primate beaconing for conjoint male intimacy.

Now why do we have the supposedly most romantic day all year in the typically coldest month of all get-out?  I mean, it would make as much sense to have the Winter Olympics in mid-July.  Ah, don’t tell me that the powsers-that-be couldn’t rid us of this pagan holiday so instead decided, at least, to try to freeze our horny little butts off??!!