Snapple RealFact #109:  Smelling bananas and/or apples can help you lose weight.

http://www.snapple.com/realfacts.asp

Right.  If you only smell them, don’t eat them, and don’t eat anything else.  Or perhaps, if you smell bananas and/or apples long enough their purgative effects kick in, you vomit, and lose everything.  Or perhaps, if you’re a chain eater, just the act of stopping and smelling anything at all means that your mouth must stop munching, and at 900 pounds already with a monstrous metabolism battling just to lub your Jabba the Hutt frame around, the occasional pause to enjoy a fragrance eventually knocks you down to 895.  Or…after smelling the apples and bananas long enough, you simply get overwhelmed and can no longer resist eating them. So you do, but having done so, you know longer crave that Big Mac and hot fudge sundae that you woke up fantasizing about.  Or as you go about constantly sniffing apples and bananas, your friends challenge you as to your motive.  And after you inform  them that sniffing peels will help you lose weight, the unremitting ridicule you suffer from them compels you to lose your appetite.  

By the way, I’ve heard around—for very similar reasons—that sniffing ________ can also help you lose weight. (fill-in and leave rationale)

Great Happenings.

I just had a near-life experience.

But I'm still lost in the nethersphere.

Which overlaps with the blogosphere only in this flutterring concurrence.

If I mattered, there might be a lifeline.  But even the Grim Reaper's lost track and there are no lines, either life or death, to grip.

So let me just wipe my hand across my mouth and laugh.  And remind myself that no one's ever fallen off of our ever-revolving Mother Earth. 

*no one has fallen off the earth*

I could spend my whole life proselytizing or whimpering about the deficiency of a life constrained to proselytizing or whimpering, but both are sides of the same counterfeit coin, so neither. 

Instead, I’ll just wonder: Why do so many girls and women, when driving alone, keep their sweet lips parted and mouths slightly agape?  And why am I ineluctably drawn to constantly notice suc?  I mean, such?

Oh, and this:  What is to be made of this? ...

Flirting Advice

Open your mouth slightly, lick your lips or chew them, show the underside of your tongue, smile voluptuously, touch your upper teeth with your tongue. You're sure to get your message across. When you're flirting, it's important to appear approachable, so don't cover your mouth or hide your face behind your hands. Be generous with your smiles. A smile says that you are approachable, that you are a kind, sociable, nice person.

Study the gestures of the target of your flirting, the way he/she toys with a cigarette or lifts a pencil or a finger to his/her lips. The gesture may be unconscious, but it reveals that the person's interest has been aroused.

When a woman is aroused sexually, her lips fill with blood and they become slightly swollen and very red. Lipstick was invented thousands of years ago to mimic this reaction. Today, it is no longer bad manners to apply lipstick at the table.

So is lipstick really a form of semi-permanent blush to primarily conceal the actual moment of such arousal (i.e., a camoflage applied so as not to openly reveal a sign of susceptibility accompanying the upwelling of true passion)?  Or is it more employed to mimic just such a moment even when it is natually lacking (i.e., to feign arousal)? 

There were two boats gliding along the river past one another in opposite directions when suddenly they hit each other with a glancing blow.  The pilot of the first boat immediately started venting in anger with a high-pitched voice and the greatest of rage until he discovered that the other boat was entirely empty and pilotless.  Thereupon, slightly embarrassed, the one pilot resumed his normal course unbothered by the incident.

As you go about life, learn to empty your boat of all its driven burden.  If your boat is seen as empty, you will sail along, encountering no protest or resistance.

   ... to paraphrase Chuang Tzu

Exuberance is the essence of today.  For I have met the summer, and it is mine.
 
Breaking free of a head cold concomitant with the mood of a sodden, soggy spring, I marshaled my spirit and form this gorgeous summer-like morn to energetically uncoil in an adamant, purposeful scamper-dash around town.

Feeling fleet as Hermes and as sure-footed as one of Hannibal’s elephants crossing the Alps, my oftentimes preoccupying body-mind struggle to “merely maintain a pace” fell into perfect remission.  Thus, with full faculties available, I availed myself of…everything!

Every color seen in the variegated flower-laden landscape was a variation, a shade unknown, perceived, wondered upon.

Every fragrance encountered upon the wafting breeze suggested life or death, sustenance or diminution, playfulness or poison.

Every girl on the street that I passed was beheld as vitally encounterable and passionately instillable.

The non-descript backs of street signs shouted blind chaos to me as loud as the painted fronts  screamed order.

Along the way, I discovered: 1) a “Five Mint Garden—Please Help Yourself”, 2) a yellow butterfly flitting about in a “where-have you-been?” dance, 3) a remembrance of a love never lost, but above all, 4) the return of summer to my soul.

Oh this implorable,  restorable, Memorial exuberance!

'Forget all the rules. Forget about being published.
Write for yourself and celebrate writing.'



Melinda
Haynes

I am strapping back in time, exchanging this for that, and falling into possession of the most youthful energy .  I am visualizing a game called Musical Chairs.  Are you all familiar with it?  

It’s a game where the players are dispatched walking to music (and why not dancing?  why not dancing ?) around a seating of chairs and when the music stops, the players must all grab the nearest seat to avoid elimination.  How elimination?  It’s arranged by the rules that there is always one less seat than players—and any excess seats are removed from the floor.  Hence, there will always be an odd prancer out when the music ends.  And that prancer is eliminated.

I utterly hate this game,  It is the essence of terrorism: A world where it’s imagined that humanity cannot find a plenitude of co-existing niches, but must overflow all boundaries of civility by essentially mandating an ownership-incompatibility the termination of which is essential to fair continuance of the game. 

You know: I never won at that game.  I’ve never won.  At all.  Because I totally  embraced the terror.  As an alibi.   To dance away.

It's time to wake up. Come on.  Wake up. Wake up.  Wake UP. 

Come on.  It's time.   ...Wow.

(I said this to myself on my way home to neverland tonight.)

Xanga’s search engine is dead again.  What else is news?!  I’m just appreciative that it sometimes works!  But hell…I need it: Do you think I can remember everything I’ve ever blogged?  Ha!   So I have this great idea…but a shadowy déjà vu comes around suggesting the possibility that I may have blogged the topic before.  But how can I know without searching for it?  I mean, after all, I write half my blogs in a half-crazed state of visionary euphoria.  And I write the other half in a fully-crazed state of drug-induced revisionary euphoria.  And it’s not like I read them or nothing.  So how would I know unless I search?

It would nice to be able to use Google to search our blogs.  Google is undoubtedly the best search engine in the world with 32% of the world’s search hits—and growing.  And while it provides a huge amount of hits—378,000—on the keyword “Xanga”, alas, it offers little prowess in being able to search the contents of all Xanga blogs.  Hence, my fallback to Xanga’s never-quite-reliable, but Xanga-content-rich search engine.

But regardless, those 378,000 hits are impressive!  And it got me thinking: How do they compare to the hits for other high-profile blogs on the internet?  So I did a little playful investigating and found:

Search word:

Xanga                    378,000

Blogger                  353,000

blogspot                 137,000

LiveJournal            121,000

Wow—Xanga’s #1  on the World’s Best Search Engine !

Now if your search Google with the search word “weblog”, you’ll get an amazing 1,180,000 hits.  If you then do a joint search using the search words “weblog” and …

Xanga                    80,400

Blogger                  69,000

blogspot                 11,900

LiveJournal            5,290

Xanga leads again!

And, then—and this just blows me away—when I continued to subset my search with the search words “weblog” + “Xanga” by adding “notforprophet”, I came up with 1,270 hits—representing 1 out of every 1,000 hits for “weblog” in the world!    Hell, could I really be so popularized?  Or is the blogging phenom more parochial than I thought?!

But the truth is, those 1,270 hits are not really hits on my blog, but mostly hits on all of you somehow referencing my blog or personage.  So a mighty thanks to the assembly of all of you for making me feel so very … special.

Four blogs back (Massive Spikes....), a Xangan named bob left a comment of concern for the "negativity" he was discerning in some of the comments on that blog. 

I slammed bob pretty hard because I thought one of the other Xanga admins was posing, i.e., wearing an alias mask.  It turns out that *bob* was not a mere alias as I (wrongly) surmised, but is in actuality john's brother and an investor in Xanga.

Once I was enlightened, I responded with this comment:

bob,

My apology to you.  You've kept such a low-profile for so long that I miscontrued your presence.  And believe me, I understand the *oversensitivity*.  By the way, thanks for the stats, I collect them!

Let's never forget: Peeps are peeps, and we all have feelings.

The stats, he shared, by the way were this:

I see how everyone on the Xanga team works their ass off to scale a user base that grows at 5% a week, with pageviews growing at 10% a week. (Put another way, Xanga's user base doubles every 3 months and pageviews double every 7 weeks.)

Another way to look at that, if the trend were to continue, would be to predict that there would be over 12 million Xangans in the year 2004.  Now that would be incredible.

There's a feather on the running path,
A bright feather just a step ahead.
Don't stop for that feather,
Don't pick up that feather,
Unless you need it for your war dress.

Donuts and Diet Pepsi for breakfast?

No thanks.  I'd rather run.

This is cool.  Let's collaborate on a blog.

OK. Let's.

I'll go first, you follow.

No.  I want to go first.

OK. Go ahead.

Treason dost never prosper.  What's the reason?

For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

So you heard that before.

Yep.

*joint laughter*

Massive spikes!  Massive drain on bandwidth!  Servers are hurting!  Breaking…breaking…

Ack.. Drowned in our own fecund prolificacy !

We all have joined together to become our own collective xangacide bomber:  Each of us with every post here placed adding a grain of blogging gunpowder to the bomb. Each with every comment here rendered contributing a microprop of plastic explosive to the payload.

Yes the totality of Xangaroos’ blogging has turned into a cancer consuming the Xanga servers...we're reaching a critical mass...a nuclear mass…LOL

If only some of us would stop!   Okay… You first  LMAO

Xanga says it's hurting again.  And it is.  Access yesterday was lethargic with short occasional outages for all;  graphics at times were not uploading;  and—sign of the times—the much-cherished (LOL) Site Data Box suffered triage and  disappeared once again from even Premium accounts.

No...The dead links and the long-gone past posts don't matter at all.  It's not the space, but bandwidth and CPU activity that's killing them. The servers, I'd wager, aren't "full", just "too busy" with the terror of rampant activity.

But I say: screw it.  If we’re going to go out, let’s all go out together, blogging our brains out, spiking like lightning with over 2 million hits!  Ha!

But if you’re a counter-terrorist (damn you):  Buy Premium and save the day!!!  Or: usernames A thru M blog on M W F, usernames N thru Z blog on T TH SA --open blog on Sundays!  LOL

Now repeat after me: We are the Blogging Scourge of all Perfection…perfectly fulfilling our Fate.

And here now, from Ohio, arguably the heartland of America, comes...

Underoos!

Girls over 14 need not apply.

Proudly displaying *wink wink* and *eye candy* graphics on the front (since on this girlie thong there is no appeciable rear), Abercrombie and Fitch spokeperson Hampton Carney describes these skimpy skeevies now hitting their store shelves as "cute and fun and sweet." 

Apparently designed for the 10-14 year-old sex-conscious (if not hungry) female, this apparel fails to go where undies always went before.

Personally, I'm appalled that the store is publicly discriminating against girls younger than 10.  Just listen:

"It's not appropriate for a 7-year-old, but it is appropriate for a 10-year-old.  Once you get about 10, you start to care about your underwear, and you start to care about your clothes."

What we have here is a moral breakdown of tremendous proportions on a national scale!  Why haven't we done more to make 7-year-old girls caring about their skimpy skivvies, too?  Once again, it seems, we've failed to reach out to our much-ignored single-digit-aged youth and instill them with the proper aesthetic impulse to care for sexy underwear.  What a sad day, indeed.

Yet, you 7-years-olds out there, take heart: Though Abercrombie and Fitch does not consider these appropriate for you, they've actually made them in a size small enough to comfortably accomodate your average teenie booty. Yes!  But just remember, if you're underage (10) and you dare to wear these, you might invite unwanted lewd comments and a scandalizing brandishment of being "risque".  But if you're a mature 7-years-old, you'll be able to cope with the controversy--right?

Because the organized apparatus of national intelligence failed to follow-up on and make prominent this “field” information…

1) In 1995, authorities in the Philippines scuppered a plan — masterminded by Ramzi Yousef, who had also plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — for mass hijackings of American planes over the Pacific. Evidence developed during the investigation of Yousef and his partner, Abdul Hakim Murad, uncovered a plan to crash a plane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. And as long ago as 1994, in an incident that is well known among terrorism experts, French authorities foiled a plot by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group to fly an airliner into the Eiffel Tower. "Since 1994," says a French investigator into al-Qaeda cases, "we should all have been viewing kamikaze acts as a possibility for all terrorist hijackings."

2) The Phoenix Memo: Agent Williams wrote the memo on July 5 (2001), detailing his suspicions about some Arabs he had been watching, whom he thought were Islamic radicals. Several of the men had enrolled at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.  Williams posited that bin Laden's followers might be trying to infiltrate the civil-aviation system as pilots, security guards or other personnel, and he recommended a national program to track suspicious flight-school students. The memo was sent to the counterterrorism division at FBI headquarters in Washington and to two field offices, including the counterterrorism section in New York, which has had long experience in al-Qaeda investigations.

… we all as ordinary citizens naively viewed the events of 9-11 as inconceivable and non-anticipatable. Remember asking and hearing: "Who would have ever thought...?" 

Was it all just a missed intelligence failing?  Or, perhaps, was such information quashed, consciously or subconsciously, because of the implications it held, if popularized, for panicking the Travel and Tourist industry?  In a time of “Peace”, could our most malleable myth of “Economy” sustain such adverse publicity without suffering a recessionary setback?  And, if travelers were frightened away and nothing happened (possibly as a result of proper precautions), what politician in the world would have been willing to take responsibility for such costs of a "non-event"?!

Some might protest that further precautions could have been taken without ever trembling consumer confidence.  I disagree.  No specific warning or effective counter-measure could have been enacted without widespread air traffic industry cooperation, and hence, the eventual outleak of “damaging” publicity.

Yet now that we’re “at War”, the vice president of the U.S., Cheney, has become an augur with Rasputin-like predictions of “not-if-but-when”  calamity.  He’s become a Prophet!  Howdy-damn!!

Well, remaining consistent with my appellation, here’s my trendy not-prediction: Some day the world will end in a dusty death upon the last syllable of recorded time. 

But the question remains: Should it not come to pass, am I willing to take full responsibility for a golden eternity?

It's sad to say, but I'm beginning now to see...
That the world is much less beautiful than I've imagined it to be.

Long after this promenade of thoughts
My emotions shall surcease in the quiescence of a shade
Unmoved by the movement of that which changes nought.

It is more than sex by which we are laid
To rest.

'What an author likes to write most is his signature on
the back of a check.'

Brendan Francis

'Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the
harder it is to do. It's better not to think about it
so much and just let it happen.'

Stephen King

'One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in
time, in others' minds.'

Alfred Kazin

Now how in the hell do I get this thing to *ROAR* again ??

Xanga currently calls itself "the weblog community".  And I've been guilty of calling Xanga a community, too.  But it really isn't.  And will never be.  That's a myth I used to buy into—even helped on various occasions to popularize.  But a community?  Give me—myself, even—a break.

If anything, Xanga's now... several, actually, many communities... Or perhaps not even.   But rather a conblogity consisting of numerous somewhat overlapping orbits of visitations with a smacked smattering of loners, first-is-last blog aborted startups, hopeful business ventures, quiet holy people, not-blogging-but-commenting types, not-typcially-blogging-or-commenting-but-almost-always-reading types, and almost certainly a child-stalker type here and a few misanthropic conspiratorial types there tossed-in.  No—it's not a community with a common ethos, but a collusion of literary illuminations, illusions, delusions, disillusions and allusions to addictive behavior—an amalgam.  Yes, Xanga is not a community but a journal-based amalgam .  And we are its amalgamites!  LOL

There are, of course, seeming *regulars* forever in the Featured Content, but  that's just one *view*  and there are so many other *views* possible:  There are big circles, there are small circles, there are webrings, there are cliques, there are gatherings, there are calls that go out by flurry of phone and instant messaging to gang on Xanga--making it a *happening*, there are school-based associations, geography-based associations, romance-based associations, etc., ...even hate-based associations—though such tend to devolve into loner types quickly.  So many *views* each calling themselves *Xanga*, each knowing themselves to be *Xanga* yet non-inclusive of the rest. 

I think it would be hilarious for two strangers representing distinctly different *views* of Xanga to run into each other, get to talking, realize that they both blog *on Xanga* but then also realize that beyond the common structure of the URL's HTML, that their *Xangas* have little in common.  In fact, when Xanga was still in "beta" (summer 2000), it didn't envision itself as "the weblog community", but rather:

I even imagine that somewhere out here there are numerous *invisible* types.   That is, the ones who only blog private, never public.  You go to their site and all you see is the *this is my first weblog* entry, but behind the scenes are countless entries about all kinds of things.  That's Xanga, too!   And you never even get to read it! :

"The Invisible Web is estimated to be between 2.5-10 times larger (and by some accounts up to 500 times larger) than the Visible Web. This portion of the Web is not made of simple, static HTML pages, rather the Invisible Web represents information sources where information is typically stored and dynamically delivered from content archives, catalogs and the like. …Typical search engines do not have the ability to search through Invisible Web information sources."

Intelliseek White Paper. True Enterprise Search: Leveraging Knowledge from the Extended Enterprise.

Maybe the next pedophile priest is writing his confession in a private blog--to be published by a friend at his request, only after he hangs himself... 

...Or a cell of terrorists could be maintaining a private blog and sharing the password.  Surely there is enough blogging and clogging of bandwidth here now to render such a conspiracy virtually undetectable.  Even if Xanga administrators would randomly sample the contents of private blogs, given the massive amount of info processing in, the chances of discovering such a conspiracy are nil.  So it's the perfect conspiratorial forum: instant setup, ease of use, total anonymity, time-tracking, unsearchable, and yet privately shareable!  It's so perfect that one could easily speculate that such was it's intended design...and that Bianca brought the first of us here to provide the conspiracy with the proper *cover*.  Mwuahahaha

So... What's your Xanga?!

"A few years from now, when my daughter visually zooms in on our house from a million miles away, interfaces conformant with the OpenGIS Grid Coverages Specification will enable the seamless real-time hand-off from the Live Earth image to some commercial one-meter Earth imagery. That zoom will positively affect my daughter's awareness of herself relative to 1) the Earth and 2) the ocean of digital geospatial information and technology our industry is pouring out in front of her."

Lance McKee Vice President, Corporate Communications Open GIS Consortium, Inc. OGC Supports Gore's Digital Earth

Hrm...geospatial...blogging?  What will that be like?  Can we have a little spinning earth  in our eProp section that would indicate by flashing lights what location (by traceroute--a method for backtracking to the source PC) our comment/eProps originated from? 

Could we have an entry-portal map of the world on the main page that would indicate with little red dots the geographical locations of all active current bloggers (say, contributors for the last 15 minutes) ?   Too mundane? 

Well, maybe, soon we'll be able to accurately map all the originating impulses in the brain and then, by intelligent automated analysis, a blog-spider will be able to match blog content to mapped areas of brain activity and a BAT-scan (Blog-Activated Tomography) will attend every blog posted?  Hrm...I wonder how many BAT-scans will need reference the groin as the source of creative inspiration??

'Forget all the rules. Forget about being published.
Write for yourself and celebrate writing.'



Melinda
Haynes

"Explanations always call for deep thought. But when you actually dream, be as light as a feather. Dreaming has to be performed with integrity and seriousness, but in the midst of laughter and with the confidence of someone who doesn’t have a worry in the world. Only under these conditions can our dreams actually be turned in to dreaming."

Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming

As with dreaming, so too with blogging.  Oh, you can be as ponderous or clever or politically incorrect or intrepid or seductive or fancifully didactic or as preachingly trenchant as you want with the words of blog.  But when it comes to posting, to the act of blogging itself, if you want to remain fluent and light and unstuck to the blogful (xangan) accelerant which draws all towards its gravitational core, into its addictive vortex, into a grinding necessity to "make the rounds", repeat (or, better yet, sing): "I have plenty of nothing, and nothing's plenty for me."

An Unlikely Interview

1) Have you ever co-authored a fictitious blog with one or more Xangans?

Yes, 1 with 2 others--we were almost certainly the first, and then there’s Goddess, but she’s for real.

2) Have any Xangans ever sent you nekkid pictures of themselves?  And if so, are you willing to share them?

Of course.  Not willing to share, but willing to trade.

3) What % of your sexual libido is nurtured by your involvement in Xanga?

Xanga is my sexual libido.  Prop me on, prop me off again, baby.  Libido and dildo, hrm…, they almost rhyme!  But no word in the English language rhymes with month.

4) Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever blogged from?

Besides my head, I’ve blogged from a tiddy bar, on the side of a rode in a blizzard snowstorm in a forest, and from a locked-up cemetery on Halloween night.  You pick strange.

5) Are you concerned about those who are addicted to Xanga?

Of course. That’s my only reason for remaining here: to assure that they remain addicted.

6) Would you continue to blog even if everyone stopped visiting your site?

Absolutely.  In fact, I’d become even more prolific.  And more brazen and revealing.  I’d get a real kick out of being totally shocking with absolutely no impact.  Like streaking and having nobody at all take notice.  That's zazen.

7) If you owned Xanga, what’s the biggest change you’d institute?

My blog would become the portal page…hahahaha…no, actually, I’d invoke *negative eProps* so that I could find out which bastards really hate my guts.  I’d also offer a premium service where you could buy allotments (in 10s, 20s, 30s, etc. ) of professional readers guaranteed to daily visit, comment, and prop you.  But they wouldn’t play like mere sycophants adoring you; instead they’d offer astute praise and criticism designed to improve your skills at blogging.  But seriously…I’d setup an FTP service so that bloggers could easily upload, download, and organize the structure of their blogs without the cloggy constraints of xTools.  And offer sexy Xanga logo apparel for sale!

8) If Xanga “just died” and remained inaccessible, what would you do?

I’d wonder.  And stare at the stars.  And grab up the xanga.com domain if it ever became available.

9) If the Internet “just died” and remained inaccessible, what would you do?

I’d wonder.  And stare at the stars.

10) If the stars “just died” and remained inaccessible, what would you do?

I’d naturally freak out.  Then, when I came to my senses, I’d stop blogging , stroll outside on a clear night, look up, open my eyes, and rediscover them.   I would.  They’d be there.  And I would dream unbloggable dreams forever.

A Bit of Xanga History...

Here’s Bianca: a “blast into the past" (Her weblog was deactivated, but Xanga couldn’t delete this archive.  Comments can be read, too, if you say “no” to debug when accessing them.)

Who was Bianca?  A Xangan "entity" who joined on 11/29/00, was banned for “ a violation of Terms of Use” on 4/28/01, but who in the meantime was one of the most loved Xangan personages—as attested by the comments and eProps left for her on her blogs.

Bianca was incredible.  Within three weeks of “joining”, she was canvassing (codeword: spamming) countless GeoCities members with a highly personalized e-mail recruitment appeal to join Xanga.  On December 18th, the first Xanga recruits, heeding Bianca’s appeal arrived.  I was late: I arrived on December 20th!  Lots and lots of us trickled in, all summoned by Bianca:

destini's Xanga Site Hey, welcome to my site.  I just started it so if it sucks, I'm sorry.  I just heard about using weblogs from this girl named Bianca who e-mailed me saying she liked my my Doors tribute page.  And she said that she was noticing my writing style and that the weblog format might work really well for me.  So.....here I am!!!!  Well, I guess that's it for now. 

But sometime in March 2001, the fair winds ceased to blow into Bianca’s sails.  She had an unannounced hiatus of a month or so—no blogs!  Xanga was sad!  Yet towards the end of April she had returned with a brand new recruitment of Angelfire websiters.  What was even more amazing is that upon her return, not only had some of our earlier "GeoCities" comments disappeared from her time-stamp updated blogs, but so had some of our props!   Excuse me!  Even seanmeister or Mr. Wizard is not capable of such discriminate eProp deletion!

Less than a week prior to Bianca's "expulsion", I had a Xangan psychic intuition:

from an entry Posted 4/23/2001 at 2:09 am :

I just awoke from the shower/bathtub (where I had fallen restlessy asleep) .  I am startled and instantly drawn back to this Xangan connection, which I left open behind a firewall.  Energetically, I am overwhelmed by a vague notion of impending structural change.  *critical mass* ? *service* ?  What is all of this??  Xanga's sailing again.

Immediately following Bianca's burial six days later, Premium service was born and the daily/weekly eProp leader count was dropped.  Xanga was rippling with changes!

Now, let us bow our heads in a prayer for Bianca:

O Bianca, had you still been around we’d never had needed the Xangalympics.  By the way, who the hell won the Xangalympics?  Premium for Life was the Grand Prize, wasn’t it?  And did the winning team ever get notified of their premium gift??  Round-trip tickets for all and a week’s stay at a resort on the isle of St. Thomas, wasn’t it?

scribbled pensively on a subway wall...

Is there any intelligent life left on Earth?

scrawled thereunder in response...

Yes, but I'm only visiting.

So why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the entire universe are directed away from Earth?!

Xanga is like a pulsar: energy on, energy off, energy on, energy off.  She loves me, she loves me not, she... 

Sometimes I’ve felt the brave new embrace of community here, sometimes nothing but solitude within my own thoughts.  It’s a quixotic commitment or remittance, either way.

You see, like any new-fangled thing, blogging is still defining itself and sorting itself out.  Like any fledgling technology endeavor, it remains somewhat of an experiment within an experience.  And, as experienced researchers will attest, some tentative thrusts in any rich trial environment will inevitably self-terminate while others hold out promise to radiantly scurry along.  It’s somewhat similar to the onset of rapid evolutionary diversification concurrent with  the establishment of a successful new lineage: many upstarts leading to evolutionary dead ends, yet still “life finds a way.”  

So, too, is the milieu within Xanga.  Let’s play Chinese fire drill.  Or is it musical chairs?  No wait, it feels more like a game of patty-cake.  Am I still here?  Where did the ya-ya go? 

Change.  It’s exciting.  It’s dangerous.  It’s unavoidable, unless you opt out altogether.  But that changes the equation, too: batteries thus exuded.

The doubling challenge facing blogging as an imminent new enterprise arises from its birthing struggle to define itself both with a viable business model (software, sustaining customer base, capable servers, accommodating bandwidth, and more) and as a cultural innovation capable of enthusiastic perpetuity.  In other words, providing a sound bottom line for a new literary form.  Under one scenario, if the form culturally goes wildfire and proves itself to be much more than a fad, the funding, like Mary’s little lambs, will follow (a financial pull).  Under another scenario, if ventures with innovative business models in the blogging market begin to yield lucrative returns,  there will be provided many incentives for further elaborating and popularizing the form (a financial push).  More likely, the endeavor will leapfrog by both pulls and pushes into greater and greater prominence. 

What’s really encouraging, however, is that, regardless of the evolution of the business model, blogging as a creative outlet is a technology that is essentially individually self-sustainable.  In other words, given the internet backbone alone (and, yes, that’s a big given, but does anyone doubt that it’s sticking around?), a savvy blogger can cheaply setup a self-sponsored blog on a self-owned “server” (your PC enhanced with free “server” software) with self-managing blogging software (again, several user-friendly offerings available free).  I’ve done it at no additional cost (other than tinkering time) to myself.  Hence, if the need arises or if you so choose, you can at anytime become your own blogmaster.  This insular capability provides an important safeguard against over-reliance upon external providers whose finances could, in a less certain economy, collapse.

When will we know that blogging has truly “arrived”?  1) Financially? Simply, when PC manufacturers start packaging blogging applets/access/software along with operating systems.  2) Culturally? Simply, when blogging becomes a commonplace offering in school curriculums.

Whither goest thou now o blogger?  Either—brightly or nigthly—yonder and morrow.

Who can make today tomorrow?

'Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the
harder it is to do. It's better not to think about it
so much and just let it happen.'



Stephen King

'One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in
time, in others' minds.'



Alfred Kazin

Just Becauses

Because I’ve decided to become extremely real.
Because the subornation to ephemeral rewards from trite incentives no longer holds appeal.
Because houses of worship are poor surrogates for the temple of oneself.
Because delusions can only retain their appeal in the context of an unexamined fantasy.
Because the dearth of actualized individualism in society has generated a rash of over-exaggerated  mimicry.
Because the boundaries of affability require a rediscovery sans a societal acquiescence to perpetual adolescence.
Because the glow of now and the zest for yes shall forever precede all denominatored stipulations of appropriateness.
Because an endless appetite of desire for desire has devolved into a trivialization of sensuousity.
Because the perpetual strangeness of each is the essence of true mystery for all.
Because the freedom of a fair wind blowing where it pleases refutes the dark-structured tyranny of a tornado.

I resolve.

Counter Strike??  I'm confused!  For a few strange unlucid moments, I thought they were talking about our webpage counter software company going on strike--ha!

But wtf?   Has anyone figure this out?

Hey, I thought this was a weblog, not a half-baked gaming service.

'Forget all the rules. Forget about being published.
Write for yourself and celebrate writing.'



Melinda
Haynes

Damn Communist propaganda, I say!   Why should we believe a word of it? …

A noodle chef in northern China has broken his own world record, making 2,852 kilometers of noodles from just one kilogram of dough, Chinese state media has reported.

According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, Li Tao performed the record-breaking feat in a hotel in Handan city in north China's Hebei Province.

If laid end-to-end, the 2,097,152 noodles would stretch from Beijing to the Philippine capital, Manila -- with a few left over to go in some soup.

Each noodle was "as fine as silk thread" Xinhua reported, thin enough for 18 of them to pass simultaneously through the eye of a single needle.

I don’t believe for an instance that there were any more than 1,999,999 noodles and that if laid end-to-end that they’d fall just short of the outskirts of Manila.  And I’m going to call them on this: Damn it, lay those noodles out and prove it you noodle-sucking commies! 

I’m tired of these end-to-end comparisons.  Like: if all of Bill Gates worth were laid end-to-end in dollar bills they stretch around the solar system.  Arghh!  All I know is that if all of Bill Gates worth were laid end-to-end in dollar bills they’d more than pay my debts as I would enjoin in a walkabout to pick them up one-by one.  By the way, did you know that if all the economists in the world were laid head-to-toe end-to-end that they would fail to reach a conclusion?!

My real speculation in all these matters is how far all the end-to-end comparisons throughout all of time have taken us so far.  What I mean is that these end-to-end comparisons have been going on for a long time.  So if everything ever that’s been stretched out in such comparisons end-to-end were stretched out together end-to-end (i.e., Bill Gates dough, Chinese noodles, cocktail hotdogs, economists, Trojan condoms, etc.) how far would they all accumulatively reach?  To the Andromeda galaxy?  Beyond?  We need to know!  Because maybe there’s another alien civilization egads-away also stretching “things” out our ways, and when our stretch of end-to-ends reaches their stretch of end-to-ends we’ll, like a Promontory Point, finally have a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind!

Now..concerning “Reality Televison Shows” :  What an oxymoron!  You know, I’ve never even watched one anyway.  My thinking: If they are really Reality, really Real Life, they’d be consumed with the lives of peeps like me—hence, not on TV!  The truest “Reality Televison” show is the one that never airs.

Finally, about those “If you were a fill-in-the-blank , what kind of a fill-in-the-blank  would you be?” tests.   I wonder who in the world has taken the most of those tests?  Can’t you just imagine that there are peeps out there addicted to these things?  Hell, I think most of them are right here on Xanga!  LOL  You know, I’m kind of interested in creating one of these tests myself.  Yes!  And it’s going to be called The “If You Were A 'If you were a fill-in-the-blank, what kind of a fill-in-the-blank would you be?' Test-Taker,  What Kind of A 'If you were a fill-in-the-blank, what kind of a fill-in-the-blank would you be?' Test-Taker Would You Be?” test.   It will consist of at least 2,097,152 questions (stretching from Beijing to Manila) and will yield but one conclusive revelation: “Congratulations.  Since you finished this test in its entirety, you are without doubt The Most Completely Insane ‘If you were a fill-in-the-blank, what kind of a fill-in-the-blank would you be?' Test-Taker alive.

Having read this post, you also now qualify for Honorable Mention.

If the Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters, how is it even possible for an elephant to swim 20 miles a day?

A more coherent thought:

Freedom is to the wind as organization is to a tornado.  Fuck the organization.

If only he had known about weblogs…

Luke Helder, 21, arrested by the FBI for the recent rash of mailbox pipe bombings across the heartland of America, is not your stereotypical terrorist.

"The top things I care about are my girlfriend ... and my music/band," he wrote in an autobiographical capsule on his band's Web site. "I party, play guitar, and talk online to everyone. That's my life."

Luke’s dad claims that Luke only wanted attention, only wanted to make a statement, only needed someone to listen to his message:

"Mailboxes are exploding! Why, you ask?

Attention people.

The United States strives to provide freedom for their people. Do we really have personal freedom? I've lived here for many years, and I see much limitation. Does the definition of freedom include limitation? I've learned about the history of various civilizations in history, and I see more and more limitation.

You have been missing how things are, for very long. I'm obtaining your attention in the only way I can.

More info is on its way. More "attention getters' are on the way. If I could, I would change only one person, unfortunately the resources are not accessible. It seems killing a single famous person would get the same media attention as killing numerous un-famous humans. There is less risk of being detained, associated with dismissing certain people."

Luke, Luke, Luke.   You should have blogged, baby, blogged.   1) Blogging is a wondrously powerful new outlet for extending one’s personal freedom of expression.  2) It’s a great way to get others' attention—if you’re willing to lay the groundwork for interactivity (don’t just blurt—go out and comment on others’ blogs: reciprocity), and 3) It won’t land you in prison for 30 years.

Which leads to an interesting speculation:  Can you imagine a Xanga blogring consisting only of inmates of, let’s say, federal penitentiaries:  PenPals Blogring:  Meet fascinating inmates from around the world! ??   

If inmates were allowed to blog, would they be having too much fun?

If inmates were allowed to blog their sentences away, would you consider acquiring inmate status in order to provide yourself with this most precious opportunity which, given your current hectic lifestyle, you now seem all too seldom to have?!

So Selfish

This blog is for me, just me..*oh he's being selfish now.*  Yes, you may say that.  In fact, I demand that you do.  And louder. And repeat.  Repeat *after you*!!!  Good.  Now listen up: this blog, this blog reveals itself.

Was that a tiddy bar with carnalities amassed? Yes.  Then whence and henceforth? The weekend  was an aural epiphany with an unmistakable signature of caring and loving kindness!  So to hell with the rest.  I don't give a fuck about rest--I yearn to strive, to stay alive, to better my best. 

So who was the grrl?  You, grrl, of course.  Always and forever you.  And the moment was an improbability in eternity never waiting to happen.  Which transpired like the first bloom of this alien entity called *flower* , nonetheless.  And I bathed in our mutually-inventing playfulness.

And then I ran like Mercury this morning, ran and encountered Pat, freebirdgonewild's dad, and defied destiny with my ability to slither deathlessly between any cradle and grave.  But before that, I retracted to 6.5 exact years of age.  And heard the church powers morbidly daunting me to attain 7.0 exact and the contemnable *age of reason*.  Yes, the Age of Reason with great calculations bureaucratically-pinholed, indeed!   I saw it so relicly-proffered, and so decided instead to horde up on reason well before that blind date!  A lifetime of reason pre-emptively sucked up in my unrationed prereasoned-aged precociousness.  But that, that is but memory (no? yes!)...while this morning itself was entirely renewing and propitiously fresh.  I was so free and young again!  And remain so, to this very moment of witness, with contempt for all forms of true lifelessness!

Shall I disappear?  Of course! Anything, everything written is not the culmination, but merely the concomitance of my adamance on this active side of infinity.  Which means: I don't count my breaths!  Yet breathe deeply, thus to avoid existential duress. 

I have a vision of a twin-engine landing on an unbending stretch of highway between Tucson and Phoenix.  So it's me and I flew treetop all the way from Costa Rica to homebase.  Only the desert is my dust-devil witness.  I did good, like Lindy, and cannot now care less.

Last night I went to Wonderland,
A land where dreamers truly can
Live life as if they really are
A universe of superstars...

We had met on Xanga.  Her name was K.
A girl of whom I dreamed to lay.
Now Wonder found us side by side
A sweep of intimacies to confide.

I reached for her, but she said “Wait”
And cellphoned her friends—'twas not too late
“Two more to join us!” she said to me
”A blonde, red-head, and I’ll make three!”

And dreams—being more than all that be—
Upon the beach, just I and….three!
I lost my mind, I lost control
As these beauties seized and soothed my soul.

Adance…we remained adance all right
Through  the sunburst of day and the starkiss of night
On this beach of desire in an ocean of trance
With touches and kisses at every chance…

Yet of the sweet three, it was only my K.
Who, quivering with thrills during all of our play,
Looked deep into my eyes and said: “Never forget:
We Wonder what’s real so as such to beget!”

Then I awoke.  Was it real?
How dare now to feel?
Ah!  But if she dreams so too
Shall not such dreams come true?

America hasn't won a war since 1945.  Korean War.  Vietnam War.  War on Drugs.  Persian Gulf War.  Terrorist War I.  Five wars.  I believe we should and could have pressed for victory in three of these.  The other two (Vietnam and War on Drugs), we had no business getting involved in.  We haven't exactly lost homeland-wise, but we haven't won either.  And at this pace, we're not about to break our dismal streak. 

Now it's not like I like wars, mind you.  I abhor them.  But if you commit to battle, it must be total.  Prosecuted to yours or the enemy's demise.  One should never engage a war with any intention other than victory.  If you pick up the sword, expect to use it.  Anything less is a tradeoff of lives for purposes of political posturing.  Fuck such martyrdom right to the gates of hell.

Now you fucking tell me.  Remember 9-11?  No I don't me the fucking news about the day, but the way that you actually fucking felt?  The horror, the anger, the sense of oneness with all your fellow Americans?  You felt different--transformed, energized, spiritually and socially enlivened--for a month or two afterwards, didn't you?  9-11 was supposed to *change our way of life forever*.

Well, it did.  In the short run.  But whereas all of us at first readily admitted the impact of the change, most of us have now slipped back into a comfortably numb socially-embraced denial thereof.  Admit it.  Nothing has change, has it?  You dumb fucks--the one's of you who are now feeling and reifying this old myth of normalcy. Do you know what you're really feeling?  The concomitant surge of an economy needing to press mindlessly onward towards its own self-glorifying growth.  The greatest myth of modernity: Economy.  Machine.  Welcome to.

We've already lost Terrorist War I, not because we have military lost it, but because we have lost sight--in our lives and in the our news media, which many of us acquiesce into acceptance as our national consciousness--of our national resolution to commit and strive onward to victory.  We have lost sight of it.

I pity those of you who upon the next trying crisis for America will slip back into the mindset of *Oh yes, this is exactly how it--I--we--felt back at 9-11!--omg! I forgot!  Now where's that plastic car flag?!*

You know one of the real worths of a weblog such as Xanga?  We can still go back--now--via hyperlink--to relive and revive and recommit to what we genuinely and rightfully felt and shared with each other post 9-11. 

I'm feeling so drawn.  Now heading back to my warblog to shed the myth of ever-renewing and amnesiac economy and to rediscover what, in those once brief shining moments, we all truly meant and intended, United, for ourselves.

'Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the
harder it is to do. It's better not to think about it
so much and just let it happen.'

Stephen King

*Writing is like sex. The more you do it, the harder it is to think about it.  The less you think about it, the more prolific you'll become.  You'll find true mastery when you discover you're doing it in your sleep.  Great writing like great dreams like great sex all source from such unreasoned fantasy.*

notforprophet

I had forgotten entirely about pancakes.  What they tasted like.  How they smelled.  What they were, even.  It seems that I have been quite deprived of their particular sensory satisfaction for a year, perhaps years.  How can one live in modern culture and escape all encounters with pancakes?  How?

Then this morning, there they were!  On a plate.  Edible.  Just like a virgin....downed for they very first time.

If you're a Netscape user and can't see the blog up in my header (only IE has the capability), check out nfp.kicks-ass.net -- *notforprophet's attache* .  It's my very-own sponsored weblog.  It resides on my PC and is completely self-contained. 

The only problem is that I still use a dial-up connection with a dynamic DNS address and if that drops, so does my server!  The desired solution: a DSL line with a static IP address.  Then I'll remain *always on* -- even if Xanga experiences outages!

Greymatter, the weblog authoring software, is the coolest thing next to Xanga!  It even has the capability to allow other authors to publish to it with a stipulated ID and password--just like Xanga.  And the ability to customize it is virtually endless.  And best of all, it's free!

To get Greymatter to work on my PC (as opposed to having it sponsored on an externalized domain server), I had to set up my PC as a *server* using another freeware item, Jana Server 2.  This was not trivial as I spent most of the night and this morning perfecting it.  However, it works now!  Dare I say: I win! ??

So my *blog-in-blog* here is now my very own Greymatter blog within my Xanga blog, whereas before I had setup an externalized livejournal blog as a Xanga infiltrant. 

And, oh, by the way, if you see nothing above (IE) and the nfp.kicks-ass.net link is dormant, bear with me: I'm just a fledging webmaster with a dial-up PC in my house  

Do Economists suck or what?

I spent the whole summer the summer before last preparing to teach a graduate level course in Public Finance and Economics.  The damnable thing was that I had never taught it before, didn’t have any extensive training in the discipline, but merely had acquired the title “Economic Analyst” along the way and that—that in and of itself  supposedly “qualified” me to teach it.  Right.  So I crammed like any struggling student would before a decisive final test and filled my life with economic learning.  Until I became a polyglot of econ-thought, Yuck!  But cramming as I did had one advantage: I had the opportunity to engage a great given body of thought in totality rather than being fed seductive parcels of it from time to time.  So instead of slowly assimilating economic percepts, I was confronted urgently with a paradigm shift—a remake of the entire world in the parlance of economics.  And thus I was presented with the conscious choice—or not—of instantly converting myself wholesale into the prototype of economic man.

Now there is a breed of economists out there that likes to shock culture with their supposedly well-reasoned insights into humanity.  It is not enough for them to just explain conventional economic phenomenon like trade or the market.  They aspire to explain all of life —even peeing, lovemaking, or picking one’s nose—with their economic philosophizing.  Perhaps none is more notorious from amongst the ranks of these social contrarians than Steven E. Landsburg, author of The Armchair Economist (Economics and Everyday Life).  I used his easily readable book in my class and nearly started a civil disturbance.  Some students loathed him and his brutish ideas.  Others were enamored  of his glistening insights.  I socratically  played both sides of the fence in order to maximize foment.  Why?  Because professorially, when wading into deep controversy, taking sides is a no-win situation.

Now take a listen to Landsberg, Chapter 17, Courtship and Collusion: The Mating Game…

Collusion, like sex, is ancient and ubiquitous.  It should come as no surprise that two such popular enterprises have been pursued in tandem.

In the markets for sex and marriage, men compete among themselves for women and women compete among themselves for men.  But men compete differently than women do, in part because men are more inclined to seek multiple partners….

In societies that allow polygamy, it is almost invariably men who take multiple wives, rather than the reverse.  Males drunk on testosterone might imagine that their lives would be better in such societies, but if the fantasy were realized most of the fantasizers would be disappointed.  For each man with four wives, there must be three with no wives at all.  You can change the laws of marriage, but you cannot repeal the laws of arithmetic. 

In a world where each man sought four women, the competition for women would be intense.  Even those men who came out victorious would pay dearly for their victories.  Women would be doubly fortunate: They would have more suitors, and their suitors, each trying to stand out from the crowd, would be more attentive and differential.  On dinner dates, the woman would be more likely to pick the restaurant and the man more likely to pick up the tab.  Married men, sensitive to their wives’ continuing opportunities, would do more housework.

Men in a polygamous society are like spice merchants perpetually resisting encroachments from competition.  Merchants respond by agreeing to divide territory.  Somewhere back in history, the masculine gender did the same.  By custom and law, men have managed to enforce a collusive agreement to limit their attentions to one woman apiece.  There is a lot of cheating on that agreement, but that is just what economic theory predicts.

So, hey, you women out there: Can’t you see that marriage is a collusive conspiracy of men against you?!  By marriage, we restrict your opportunities!  We men would joyously embrace polygamy if only we could convince those 3 out of every 4 other men who would thus have no woman to become gay.   But in lieu of that unlikelihood, we’re keeping you down in the male institution of marriage.  Yes!  And here I always thought that women were the unreasonable marriage brokers!

'I write for the same reason I breathe -- because if I
didn't, I would die.'



Isaac Asimov

'Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the
ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is
asleep.'



Catherine O'Hara

Some things that I wish that I had said first…

If at first you don't succeed,
redefine success.

A thing not worth doing isn't worth doing well.

Time is just nature's way
to keep everything from happening at once.

All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.

I don't have a solution;
but I do admire the problem.

Don't get married. Find a woman you hate and
buy her a house. It's a lot easier on you.

How much can I get away with
and still go to heaven?

THE BUCK DOESN'T EVEN SLOW DOWN HERE
So keep on going.

Strip Mining Prevents Forest Fires

HAM AND EGGS
A day's work for a chicken;
A lifetime commitment for a pig.