New Year’s Eve in Panama.  One word to describe the midday happenings here in the town of La Chorrera: hectic.  Street markets are overflowing with shoppers preparing for fiestas later tonight.  Pigs and chickens sold live are being taken home and slaughtered in preparation for the traditional midnight feast.  Fruits of all kinds are being bought by the crate-fuls. 

 

 

Some beer distributors will stay open all night for frequent revisits from partiers who’ll run low on stock in the wee hours of the morning.  Plans and preparations are well underway for an all-night long, town-square performance of the cumbia, a traditional, or ‘tipico’ Panamanian circle dance where couples taunt, flaunt, display, and submit their sexuality and sense of ‘coupleness’ both unto one another and unto society ritualistically.  At midnight precisely, as everywhere in the world, fireworks will be detonated.  But additionally, here in Panama, all the multitudinous displays of life-sized dolls called Años Viejos, or ‘the Old Year Ones’ which have been erected over the past week, will be torched, literally burnt to the ground where they sit or stand affront of houses and on public roadsides, to symbolize the infernal passing of all that’s grown archaic.

 

 

So what the hell am I personally up to?  Taking some pics, gathering ‘life-affirming intelligence’ (code words for ‘girl-watching and staying alive’), and pondering an hour-or-so late afternoon run in the 90-degree plus near-equatorial  heat and sun (thus dissing the ‘life-affirming intelligence’ just gathered—ha!).  I also bought a birthday cake for my daughter, turning 19 today.  And I bought four more chairs for a sizable crowd expected to arrive where I’m staying, rent-free, for a New Year’s Eve Party tonight.

 

Last words of the old year: Be yourself the arsonist of all aging decadence now encountered.  And rise from the char and ashes in the new year with a phoenix’s fresh wings!

It’s a crazy life.  One day I’m subjecting myself to abject desiccation by running out in the sparsely inhabited interior of Panama under the tropical midday sun for two hours.  The next day, I’m bopping around the capital city of Panama in a lent car in the early morning seeking out the cool air-conditioning of a hotel bar so as to enjoy a cold beer and the ultimate creature comfort of writing while sitting  and sipping Coronas. 

 

*sipping and writing*…

 

While the people of Panama are among the most friendly in the world, in public, very few will make eye contact, except for the tougher, macho  hombres who will try to stare into you as if to discern the source of one’s life force itself.  Women, especially, almost always keep their eyes downcast in passing unless you grab their attention by beeping your horn or cat-whistling or saying something like “Hey, baby, you’re the most happening thing since the invention of sex.”  

Beeping one’s horn in passing a pretty girl seems almost mandatory if you feel you’re a man who could fulfill her (well, actually, more probably your projected) needs.  Horns are forever tooting on the congested main streets of most Panamanian cities and larger towns and I’d estimate that about 10% of those toots are actually hoots for attractively-endowed, actualizing females.  My impression is that if you’re a ‘real man’ in Panama, and both your brakes and horn are broken, that you fix your horn first.   

 

Cat-whistling, while a lost art due to sensitivity issues in the U.S., is ardently practiced by nearly every male capable of sucking air here in Panama.  Personally, I feel quite disadvantaged, for I’m neither equipped with a good whistle nor normally emboldened in this customary practice.  So I’m more likely to blurt “Hey, baby, you’re the most happening thing since the re-invention of sex at your place tonight” or some such  romantic deliverance.  But the men who can whistle well often do catch a response, albeit only a smile or a giggle from a girl who enjoys the wild energy of such attention. 

The truth is, however, if a gorgeous Panamanian girl, reagradless of how she responds, doesn’t induce such attention from a capable man, she’ll assume that he is either gay, sexually repressed, sick, or standing next to his wife—in that order.  Even married men, when away from their wives, become horn-tooting, cat-whistling boys in an eye-blink.  And, make no mistake, the wives are well-aware of this duplicitous behavior on the part of their husbands.  In fact, though married women frown upon spousal infidelity, oftentimes the total lack of such can lead some wives to wonder if their husbands aren’t, perhaps, closet gays with a convenient heterosexual cover of a wife.   It’s almost…’almost’…as if a married man of urgent potency needs at least one girlfriend to socially affirm his otherwise questionable masculinity.  Strangely non-monogamous, no? Or perhaps it is rather a matter of needing a ‘wife’ in order to qualify for a draw from the ever youth-infused harem pool of ‘girlfriends’?!  ...

 

 I'm so lost!  Save me, Mr. Wizard, save me!!!

A lookback to the beach of Rio Mar, Pacific, Panama.  The black basaslt-type volcanic sand is brought to the ocean (Mar) by the river (Rio) flowing seawards.  Fun was had with several hermit crabs scuttling along the beach.  Ouch.  I cut my foot on a boulder laden with barnacles in the ocean sometime after this picture was taken.

Pondering the purchase of native seashell jewelry, daughter Jenny at an El Valle market.  El Valle is a gorgeous valley resort tucked in between mountains constituting a national park designated primarily for the preservation of diverse species of golden frogs and hummingbirds. 

A view from the valley of El Valle mountainwards.  The foreground of luxuriant brush is growing upon a foundation of slurpy mud and quicksand.  I was able easily to probe a 10 foot branch almost wholely into the substrate with little effort!!  The slurpiness is the result of thermal springs welling up in this not yet entirely inactive volcanic region.  Hot springs therapy is here available along with various classes of highly-mineralized mud applications for various physical ailments and for beauty facials. (I passed on the latter.)

Amanda, a youngster of great native beauty.  It's extremely rare to find an overweight child in Panama.  And one must also look hard to spot a truly obese adult.  I think I might just freak out when I return to the States and start once again bouncing off Stay-Puff Marshmallow clones in the elevator rides in my workplace at the Federal Reserve Bank (hint: 'Feds'= too well- fed ).

All my winter running around the very hilly Lakeview cemetery is serving me well in the physical toning it imparted as I now scamper and jog about the equally hilly Panamanian countryside.  And my graphic recall of the twilight tranquility that froze into my mind while coursing about the doom of death’s monuments now provides me with a soothing counteractive mindset while scorching under an emboldening yet potentially incinerating tropical sun.

 

Ice and fire, fire and ice. 
Good measures of each enrich our lives,
yet at extremes, both death entice.

 

Instead of a hanging at a local cantina with just 'los hombres', last night I went to a Panamanian discothèque.  It was ‘Ladies Night’ and you’d think that would mean that the girls get in free, but they didn’t.  The cover for the ladies was $3 and for the guys, $10.  But that included ‘open bar, open beer’ (advertised just so—in English) for all.  Well, I’m not a huge dancer, and spent the first couple of hours just drinking beer and watching the girls fling their bodies around.  Then I closed my eyes, swayed in my seat for awhile and simply imagined passion.  And I began, still with my eyes closed, to glide astrally above and beyond the dance bar, far out over the isthmus, mixing with soaring birds that exploded into brilliant colors—mixing the music with flight into a soaring delight. And I imagined that I enjoyed the music more just listening with my eyes closed than I could additionally  watching, or even dancing, for that matter.  But I once again proved myself wrong as, after several more beers, I found myself engaged in a flow of motion on the dance floor.  I’m afraid I’ll never know what I look like at such moments for I’m much too mindless then to harbor any measure of self-cognizance.  But I believe that sometimes mindless is good.  And whether good or not, it’s proving indispensable to my enjoyment of this trip.

This, now, for me, is living: thrown into the middle of Central America, taking in the sun-soaked morning, sitting at a shaded table on the outdoor balcony of a small town café sipping coffee, caressed by warm, gentle breezes, without a single obligation (consciously realized) or a pressing necessity to work, watching pretty girls occasionally wandering by, and just jotting thoughts that come to mind.  Oh, I suppose it could be better:  I could be laying upon a pristine Pacific beach, sunning, drinking daiquiris and otherwise doing the same—but that’s tomorrow.  Or I could be conspiratorially knocking down beers under a thatched-roofed, deep-shadowed, open-air cantina bullshitting with the local hombres—but that’s later tonight.  Then again, maybe not.  In fact, I’m sure I’m in just  the perfect spot to match the consciousness of the world at the moment .  And here’s the mantra of my quest: Have laptop, will travel.

 

The season of storms and continuous rains has all but passed and virtually endless sunshiney days lie ahead here in Panama.  Besides the challenge of tropical sun and heat, the single largest contrast now is the hours of sunshine--almost 12 daily here already, while back in Cleveland we were enjoying but 8.  That means the day here is 50% longer! And that means that I can spend 50% more energy getting 50% more tired!

The trickstering aspect of it is that because it seems like summer, it doesn't feel at all like Christmas. So I'm not in the gift-giving mode--which is good since I didn't  pack any with me anyway.  But I am having fun and the sun is kicking my ass on the run...and I think I'll get blasted at a huge extended-family-type Christmas party in the countryside tonight.

 ...from a week ago, while running in a cemetery stateside-a Very, Very Silent Night

“The morning comes to consciousness of faint stale smells of beer from the sawdust trampled street with all it’s muddy feet that press to early coffee stands.”

 

Well, T.S. (Elliot) had the coffee stands right, at least.  But here in La Chorrera, Panama, consciousness resumes with the rising of the hot tropical sun, and the street-markets re-assembling on Avenida Central, and the smell of hot bread baking from panaderias (bakeries) scattered everywhere about town.

 

The markets, stores, and restaurants here in La Chorrera are a shopper’s budget dream.  A cup of coffee is only 25 cents, 30 cents if you take it with crème (the sugar’s free!), you can pick up 20 oranges for ‘one dollah’, a six-pack of beer costs $2.60, and a decent pair of running shoes goes for $20 to $40  with a 30% discount from that (unless you wear the ‘ungodly’ size of 12 as I do, and then. 'no discount, man').

 

The morning should also soon come to sizzling consciousness with an hour and a half run into the countryside.  Though I had traveled on only three hours rest from the night before, when I arrived here in Panama yesterday my first inclination, after settling into my Spartan accommodations, was to run a route I’d run daily 19 years ago.  And so at 5 P.M. yesterday, I took to the streets and let my feet carry me through memories of the interior countryside.  And I met the challenge of the sweltering heat and total humidity without cutting short a single stride (in other words, I didn’t stop until I returned to home base).  But the real challenge will lie in running under a higher sun today.

 

Now a day of new adventure awaits—and I’m off without delay.

 

 

Entourage scene from La Chorrera.  My daughter is the Panamanian in the center with the sunglasses on!

I haven’t had a ‘vacation’ or respite from work of more than three consecutive days in the last 11 years.  And I haven’t had a single day off, it would appear, since mid-summer.   Yet today brings newness as I actually slept-in to the unimaginable hour of 10:30 AM, dreaming of girls arrayed in lusciously revealing positions and  dream-envisioning myself, at times an adjunct professor, a student again and cheating on a test (which I never did—ever during my actual tenure as a student for so many, too many years). 

 

And now for the next 10 days, starting tomorrow, I’ll be away from home, and possibly Xanga, too (wait...isn’t that redundant?!)  as I loll and cavort and run like a banshee in the land of my rebirth: 9 degree north latitude, Panama.

 

Oh, I won’t be staying in a hotel.  There won’t be air conditioning, probably not even hot water.  There certainly will be little privacy and my valuables won’t be truly secure so I’ll have to hold onto them wherever I go.  But I will be amidst the common people in the interior countryside, a guest, and there will be many parties flowing from ever open doors into the streets, moments of all-night street dancing, and the opportunity to socialize in breeze-cooled straw hut cantinas during the mid-day heat.   I will seek out a visit to a certain pristine Pacific beach where you feel you own it-and-eternity for being the sole proprietor making footprints in the sand.  And I will run unimproved jeep trails (actually more like donkey trails) for good distances out into a plush places of forgetfulness—and back, if I don’t forget!

 

And I will write on my laptop.  And I will have my digital camera with me to seize the sites.  But I may not post until I return, unless I run into a generous soul down there who’s joined the cyber age and is willing to provide me with his/her access to that nation’s fledgling internet backbone.  Oh, the dread of that.  But, ah, the sweet, unencumbered, undriven ‘workless’ release otherwise!

 

Happy holidays and Merry Christmas all!  And either pray or don’t pray that I find a way to bum off a coved beach nine degrees north of the equator for the rest of my life.

9 degrees.

I can't even connect to American culture tonight.

9 degrees north.

Is there anybody out there?

9 degrees north latitude.

9 degrees north.

9 degrees.

9.

Tomorrow's my 2nd xangaversary, but yesterday, Dec. 18th, was actually the 2nd anniversary of Xanga going full-fledged public.  Though Xanga now, with its new .net/.aspx implementation of the "Newly Updated List" has wiped away the evidence, I was able awhile ago to establish Xanga's date of first truly public debut:

The Anciently Updated List

 

Here is the ancient, founding key, the Rosetta Stone, to the genesis of Xanga  as we know it.    (note of 12/19/2002: this previous link is the link that no longer works--it's now defunct!)   ...and so on...

  

Xanga is getting better, bigger, faster with the .net implementation and streamlining of features.  But it is also burying its past quite tracelessly.  This research above would no longer be possible today provided the current severely-limited interface accesses to searching xanga's past.  But that is just the inherent structure of blogs, isn't it--to live in the now and for the latest, if not for tomorrow? 

I'm starting to get the feeling that the typical rapid plowing over of blogs and what's considered "current" in the Blogosphere is just symptomatic of a larger growing trend to become 'history-less' (storyless?) and embrace high-velocity culture change.  "What have you done for me lately?" has transformed into "What are you doing for me now?" 

I'd bet that if Shakespeare were alive today and had blogged, by installment posts, scenes from Romeo and Juliet two years ago that they would have been HUGE at the time but today unread!  ...unless of, of course, he kept re-posting his excellent old posts--which makes a superb case for all of us to do just that with ours!

The Blogosphere Challenge: Why browse yesterday when you can help blaze tomorrow? ...

"You want pistols, hot-blooded people bent on making their mark.  Not mild mannered, conforming types who will succumb to the awesome power of the existing culture." 

"...you must hit with enough shock effect to immobilize the old culture at least temporarily."

"You must seize control of the energy-turn it to your advantage-so it can't be used to fortify and perpetuate the old culture."

"You need radicals. Rebels. Revolutionaries.  People who howl at the moon."

"...you can develop a reputation as public enemy #1 and still prevail if you have a good supporting cast."

"Start out fast and keep trying to pick up speed.  Leave skid marks. "

 from High-Velocity Culture Change , by Price Pritchett and Ron Pound,  A Handbook for Managers

The xanga-adaptation: "Leave prop marks."

For my last post, in order to broaden its exposure beyond my ‘regular’ subscribers, I employed a mild programming ruse to draw in new readers.  Hitting on entries in the ‘Newly updated Sites’ that were unknown to me,  I left them a comment, not by ‘notforprophet’ , but by a surrogate alias I’d secured a long time ago called ‘eProps’. 

 

Now, eProps is all kinds of fun since I get to leave eProps by eProps!  But eProps is also a very alluring site because many mucho hordes of the unknown xangan masses out there believe that eProps is xanga’s God.  It’s what they live, breath, beg, cajole, taunt, and sometimes even threaten for.   Probably no one item of xangan culture has more nicknames than eProps.  They’re referred to as propz, epills, pr0pz, ePoopiez, epropssssssss, epOppies, eprOppz, ePillz, e`p`i`l`l`z, epOps, propzz, 2pills, epRoPiEz, e`pillllllz, pilllz, and more and onwards...

 

So to test the suspected appeal of the eProps site, about three months ago I posted two duplicate posts—one on 'notforprophet' and one and eProps—and conducted a little experiment.  Though not exactly scientific since the controls weren’t precise, I found that, with a given amount of commenting amongst my old subscribers as 'notforprophet' and with an equal amount of commenting as 'eProps' among Newly Updated newbies unknown to me, the eProps version of the post got almost twice the responses (eProps and comments) through links-back!   Damn—eProps had more name appeal than 'notforprophet'!  Haha  So how, I pondered, could I make eProps work for me?  Maintain two correlative blogs?  Nope, too much work for me and the induced schizophrenia would make me paranoid.  Abandon 'notforprophet' and assume the mantle of eProps?  Naw…I’m too sentimental.  So…so…I got an idea…What if I were to redirect—via a javascript include—the apparently tantalizing eProps link, left as comments with the newbies, back to my very site here?  Eureka…and indeed: eProps is now nfp for visitation purposes (actually, both eProps and nfp are setup as referring aliases) !   Newbie bait.  Now, in your opinion, should I be doing this?  Is it naughty or nice?

Screw the Regulators and their sucky Xangablogoftheyear nominations.  That jerk or jerks took all 'nominations', supposedly to be voted upon, and has since been whittling them down like a feasting stalinist autocrat to suit his/her self-appointed tastes.  We don't need critical autocrats here-rather, let's let a thousand flowers bloom.

So instead, I have now finished with my own Xanga 2002 Best Blog of the Year contest.  Voting has stopped.  The tally is in...and...

 IS

The Fantastically Fabled

 

But I bet you knew it all the time!!!

Today was not intense.  How can the day in the life of moi or anyone at all not be intense?  I must be suffering from some sort of sedating hallucination.  No--that's it: I'm dreaming!  And the magnificent though less than truly intense part of it is that I can blog in my sleep!  So...can you comment in yours, too?  Damn, I'd hate for you to be awake and reading this.  That would be so unfair seeing that I'm just drifting along in undisturbed somnolence, so ethereally cast amidst the sighs and gentle whispings of a beneficient dreamland.  Ah!--but join me, will you not?  Let's fade together into the slumbering meanderings of collective imagination, prance and play unbounded, then surface stalwart upon some tomorrow ready for the challenge of "reality's" pettier blandishments.  Can you do that?  Can you grow childrening with me?  Or have your winged hopes and flight-worthy fantasies already been forever silenced by the wiles and beguiles of fast food and TV?  ...I merely ask.

 

Still running (7 miles yesterday, 4.2 today) and writing in the cemetery here in wintry, late-fall Northern Ohio.  But now, after running, when I’m consequently sweaty, I take to the cab of my truck to write rather than risk catching a chill outdoors. 

 

While running today, I realized that my modus operandi vis a vis running is precisely now contrary to what it was while I was in the military years ago.  Then, though I quite often ran through a cemetery (Corozal, Panama), I never, except for one shocking psychic moment, stopped running while in the cemetery, but always ran back to ‘home base’ unstoppingly.  But now, I always end in the cemetery.  How the hell did the cemetery become my new ‘home base’? 

Hey, I’m not concerned that I’ve yinned my yang.  I think, indeed, that this reversed implementation now matches up well with another realization that occurred to me right after running yesterday: that I’ve transformed my warrior role from service to the state into one of failsafe rebel.   And what that means is that I exist to crush our government should it ever attempt a wholesale curtailment of our freedoms.  Precisely the notion that ran through my head was this: ‘If our government ever stifles freedom so entirely—on whatever grounds or for whatever justification—so as to become indistinguishable from a totalitarian regime, the counter-measures I’ll undertake to devastate the regime will make today’s terrorists appear to by fighting by Marquis of Queensbury rules.’ 

Yep, I’m now a rebel-in-waiting and hoping never to see 'the day'.  For the true warrior yearns for the fate of the proverbial Maytag repairmen: waiting un- (but not dys-) functional till all the laundry’s done.

 

 

Hey, don’t look at me that way—what did you expect?  I’d never ever want Bush’s Borg-total-control-clone to consider me more than once as anything but nondescript.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous.
But let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together;
For the pillars of the temple stand apart.
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
(From "The Prophet" by Kahil Gibran)

She wonders how I feel about her.  But why does she wonder?  Have I not told her so in so many ways?  Ah—but that was ‘before.’   Before what?  Before the feelings went away.  Went away?  How could such profound love so prodigiously expressed drift into nothingness?   I tell you: it’s not easy being a sensitive, caring man and having deep feelings that time cavalierly and without warning retracts.  Or perhaps it’s more the case of the heart, too easily given, not withstanding the test of time?

I think perhaps women are wiser in their penchanting reticence to embrace every chant of love as ‘the real thing.’  They’ve heard penises talk shit before, even rhapsodize, knowing that what some men call ‘love’ is only intelligence in the service of bestiality.  O, they could pretend, letting the men pretend to not pretend, and, you know, sometimes such affairs become so curiously confounding that all pretense gets dropped and an ember of love is discovered in that embrace of bodies, heart to heart.  But usually not. 

What would happen if every time you heard anyone say to you “I love you”, you had an orgasm?  Would that enhance the quality of one’s life?  Here’s Tiger Woods ready to clinch his next Masters with a putt on the 18^th and an admirer calls out right in the middle of his swing: “I love you, Tiger.”  Squish.  His nine-iron shoots erect before he can finish the swing and his putt is untrue due the interference of his damn ding-a-ling. 

No, it’s better allow some native skepticism to shadow and sometimes shadow-out precarious romantic intrigues.  “I’ve been burned by love before”, she screams.  So then, twice shy?  Men don’t seem to get burned as much…cause the feeling goes “away”? ...

 

 From Willow :

Mad, just after being hit with a pouch containing the magical Dust of Broken Hearts…

MADMARTIGAN: Oh, Sorsha. Awake from this hateful sleep. It deprives me of your beauty. The beauty of your eyes.

Sorsha's eyes open and a dagger flashes from beneath her bedsheet and appears at his crotch.

SORSHA: One move, jackass, and you really will be a woman.

Madmartigan reaches out with both hands.

MADMARTIGAN: You are my moon, my sun, my starlit sky. Without you I dwell in darkness. I love you!

SORSHA: What are you doing here?

MADMARTIGAN: Your power has enchanted me and I stand helpless against it. Come to me, now, tonight. Let me worship you in my arms.

SORSHA: Get away from me!

The dagger slices his shirt right up to his throat.

MADMARTIGAN: I love you!

SORSHA: Stop saying that!

MADMARTIGAN: How can I stop the beating of my heart? It pounds like never before.

He grabs her free hand and clasps it against his naked chest. Her other hand presses the dagger against his throat.

SORSHA: Out of fear.

MADMARTIGAN: Out of love.

SORSHA: I can stop it. I'll kill you.

MADMARTIGAN: Death next to love is a trivial thing. Your touch is worth a hundred thousand deaths.

And the next day, after the Dust ‘wears off’…

Sorsha twists her body uncomfortably.

SORSHA: You're holding me too tight.

MADMARTIGAN: I don't want you to get away.

SORSHA: Why? Because I'm your moon? Your sun? Your starlit sky?

She angrily whips her head around and her thick hair hits him in the face.

MADMARTIGAN: Get your hair out of my face or I'll chop it off.

They ride along in silence.

MADMARTIGAN: Did I really say those things?

SORSHA: You said you loved me.

MADMARTIGAN: I don't remember that.

SORSHA: You lied to me.

MADMARTIGAN: No I didn't, I... I wasn't myself last night.

SORSHA: I suppose my power enchanted you and you were helpless against it...?

MADMARTIGAN: Sort of...

SORSHA: Then what?

MADMARTIGAN: It went away.

SORSHA: Went away??   "I dwell in darkness without you," and it went away??

She elbows him hard in the gut and makes a run for it!!!

I'll love you forever-if I can ever figure out forever.

And If I can't, I'll still love you to the end of time.

I can hardly believe it. Why the hell are you leaving xanga?

I keep getting asked if I’m getting ready for my trip to Panama which will extend from Dec. 23^rd until Jan 1^st .  But what’s to get ready?  I’m taking my laptop so I know I’ll need to clone (backup) the entire drive before leaving.  I also want to encrypt some info on it so that if it’s lost or stolen, I have less to worry about.  Actually, encrypting that info is something I should have done long before—among the ‘sensitive’ material: pics of many xanga beauties who’ve sent me their exposures as ‘your eyes only’ .  What else?  You know, the ususal fare of Caribbean bank account codes, locations of weapons caches, records of various nefarious drug transactions, and lists of all my hundred blogs and their passwords.  Shit—this stuff is soooo incriminating.

 

Let’s see, what else do I need to prepare?  Hrm…need to get a copy of the State Department’s most recent report on regional/local Panamanian trouble spots—I need to know where to go should things get boring and I’m looking for some action.  I also need to look into anti-malarial pills, killer bee evasion techniques, and avoiding risks from vampire bats.  I should get a refresher book, too, on venomous tropical snakes so I know which ones I can handle and which ones I should merely stare at.  And I need to remember to carry enough cash to bribe the local cops should/when I get stopped.

 

Damn, the more I think about it, the more fun this all begins to sound.

Time is of the essence, but what’s the essence of?

When it comes to terror, think about this: There’d would be nothing more terrifying than to know that you’re not at the top of a voracious food chain such as now exists on earth.  Yet, terror is always in the eye of the prey-holder.  What’s the prey’s ‘terror’ is just ‘bringing home the bacon’ for the predator.  And as it is amongst animals, so is it also with our own human internecine moments of religious and political terror.  What has been seen as ‘terror’ to us is just ‘waging a holy war’ for the terrorizing scavenger.

 

How did we, as humans, eliminate the ‘terror’ of the foodchain? By essentially eliminating or completely containing our natural predators and thus promoting ourselves to the ‘unterrorizable’ spot at the top.  Merely becoming a ‘vegetarian’ eliminates ‘terror’ down the foodchain (except for plants), but not upwards.

So how must we, as powerful, modern societies, deal with those who would now terrorize us?  Embracing  ‘Peace’ alone would eliminate our serving to terrorize those less fortunate and downtrodden and at our mercy already.  Yet, embracing ‘Peace’ will not stop the predating-terrorists from targeting us.  We must begin “by essentially eliminating or completely containing” the terrorists.  And then, and only then, can true Peace-vegetarianism receive our embrace and thrive unthreatened.  Except for the plants.  But don’t worry: they enjoy be eaten.

Dealing with Saddam

 

If I were Bush I’d…

 

…Covertly have the CIA sell a nuclear bomb to Saddam, have it all on videotape from production to delivery, then say to the world: “We know he has nukes because we sold them to him ourselves .”  Then proceed forthwith despite any objections.

 

…Sever all presidential ties—ongoing for years—with Billy Grahams’s *Crusade*  Anything *Crusade* fuels fundamentalist rhetoric.  Instead create an official holiday honoring Saladin, the brilliant Islamic poet/warrior/conquerer of Jerusalem.  Make Graham crackers and Salada tea the official snack of Saladin Day.   

"It is equally true that his (Saladin’s) generosity, his piety, devoid of fanaticism, that flower of liberality and courtesy which had been the model of our old chroniclers, won him no less popularity in Frankish (Christian) Syria than in the lands of Islam"

  --The Epic of the Crusades, Rene Grousse

 

…Resurrect the notion of Kennedy’s Peace Corps, but dub it the Koran Corps.  Send young, patriotic Americans overseas as grassroot ambassadors of goodwill but first require their conversion to Islam.  Allow these converted  ambassadors to take with them their insatiable hunger for McDonald’s Big Macs, videotapes of the Simpsons and Osbournes, and CD cuts of assorted rock music.  Allow 5 years for the subornning of native Islamic cultures.

 

…Require Vice President Dick Cheney to move to the middle of Wyoming where the secret, mysterious blasts occurring in his compound on his behalf won’t terrorize neighboring, decent Americans.  Or leave Cheney where he is but require his neighbors to move.  Then re-situate all hostile, foreign Islamic embassies and consulates into that neighborhood so that they will be rattled by the blasts instead.  See: Secret Blasts Rattle Cheney’s Neighbors

 

…Create an alternative state-counterforce to nationalistic, militaristic, fundamentalist Islam.  Call it  Isn'tlam .  Replace 'the Prophet' with the ideological blatherer,  notforprophet.   Attack Iraq during the holy month of RamSaddam with quotes from Rumi.  Drop free passes to Disney World across the Iraqi countryside along with copies of the dreaded corsobomb. 

 

…And if none of the above work,  follow the lead of Berkeley, Calif. and mute the saber-rattling *oil issue* by building cars that run solely off of bio-based (soybean) fuel.  amen.

A Forgotten Landmark

Every Christmas of late, and sometimes even upon the Eve, I have visited the site of the very first public Christmas tree in America and have stood there contemplating the possible meaning(s) of Christmas.
 

 

But it’s funny because, though there’s a plaque in commemoration, there is no tree!  You’d think the community would embrace the holiday spirit and celebrate the location of the first historic Christmas tree in America with a grand re-creation and festive lighting ceremony.  But no, alone I arrive in darkness each Christmas and alone I have always remained, for the site, it seems, is entirely forgotten and totally uncelebrated.  And yet a multi-million dollar industry in the sale of Christmas trees has spun/spawned from it, to say nothing of the joy that the 'tannenbaum' has given us all at this time of year .  Oh, how quickly we forget!

 

Here’s the story about the controversy and scandal that the first public Christmas tree in America caused.

 

And here is the actual record of the first decorated private tree…but it was Schwan’s tree described above that launched the tradition in America.

I have a thousand thoughts--that's all.

What the hell am I going to do with a thousand thoughts?

A Tuber’s Kismet

I wonder if its fate it pondered,
While in soily nutrients entrenched
And by summer sun and warm rains drenched,
This carrot once buried in the earth.

Could it envision the moment of squander,
When plucked in fullness from the soil
The purpose for its growing toil
As source of food to never know true worth?

But rather in snow in a season yonder
To be thrust with force to make a nose
And for a spell called freezing to hold that pose
For the sake of some silly human mirth?

Sometimes when I let my own thoughts wander
I glimpse a fate much like that carrot’s
Where all I’ve worked for, all my merits
By changeling Trickster are transformed to dearth
...and I am buried in the earth.

It appears that the average daily posting rate on xanga these days is somewhere between 20,000 (rate at 6 am this morning) and 94,000 (rate at 3 pm yesterday).  That, my friends, is a lot of posts!  While some people may post multiple posts, most probably post just a single post a day.  So those numbers above also suggest the # of xangans posting daily. 

 

Just for the sake of argument, let’s severely under-represent the probable number and assume the lower figure, 20,000, as the number of xangans posting daily.  This compares to 1600 new posts last Thanksgiving (2001) and that was a ‘heavy traffic’ day back then (holidays usually are).

 

What amazes me most about this is not the tremendous growth of xanga, but how it has grown.  Back a year ago, it seems the top 10 Featured Content posts were raking in between 40-70 eProps per.  And today, despite the tremendous growth, the magnitude of average comments/props for the top Featured posts remains largely unchanged (well, maybe the top ones garner slightly more attention—but certainly less than double). 

 

Essentially, xanga has grown extremely huge but not tall.  Rather than shooting skyward like a Mt. St. Helens, xanga has grown like Mauna Loa, spreading out with a low-angle cone.

Hey, ‘shield volcanoes’, like Mauna Loa, aren’t trite: they are actually the largest volcanoes in the world.  Though the ‘peak’ is never that ‘tall’, the base is truly expansive and tends to evermore-expand as the highly-fluid, lowly-viscous basalt emissions flow readily across the ground tens of kilometers away before finally cooling.

And thus seems xanga: ever-expanding but hardly peaking.  Even possibly the most commented and propped blog ever, John's apology of last week—which had front page 'News' billing, mustered only 253 comments and 494 props.  Ha, 253 out of 20,000 (but more likely 50,000) potential commenters is hardly even a perceptible goosebump on a newborn baby's smooth butt!

 

What are the implications?  Several come to my mind, and I'll paint a few possible future scenarios in a blog to come soon.  But I'd like your impressions first.

I don't often just pass 'internet funnies' along, but in watching the reaction of the Deep South (even through a number of xanga blogs) to the 'horrid ice/snow storm' that's somehow has deposited all life in a snow drift a foot deeper than a nuclear winter, I feel the need to brag about my (and other Ohioans) hardiness:

OHIO TEMPERATURE CONVERSION CHART (degrees F)

@ +70 degrees
Texans turn on the heat and unpack the thermal underwear.
People in Ohio go swimming in the Rivers.

@ +60 degrees
North Carolinians try to turn on the heat.
People in Ohio plant gardens.

@ +50 degrees
Californians shiver uncontrollably.
People in Ohio sunbathe.

@ +40 degrees
Italian & English cars won't start.
People in Ohio drive with the windows down.

@ +32 degrees
Distilled water freezes.
Lake Erie water gets thicker.

@ +20 degrees
Floridians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, and woolly hats.
People in Ohio throw on a flannel shirt.

@ +15 degrees
Philadelphia landlords finally turn up the heat.
People in Ohio have the last cookout before it gets cold.

@ +10 degrees
People in Miami all die...
Buckeyes lick the flagpole.

@ -20 degrees
Californians fly away to Mexico.
People in Ohio get out their winter coats.

@ -40 degrees
Hollywood disintegrates.
The Girl Scouts in Ohio are selling cookies door to door.

@ -60 degrees
Polar bears begin to evacuate the Artic.
Ohio Boy Scouts postpone "Winter Survival" classes until it gets
cold enough.

@ -80 degrees
Mt. St. Helens freezes.
People in Ohio rent some videos.

@ -100 degrees
Santa Claus abandons the North Pole.
Buckeyes get frustrated because they can't thaw the keg.

@ -297 degrees
Microbial life no longer survives on dairy products.
Cows in Ohio complain about farmers with cold hands.

@ -460 degrees
ALL atomic motion stops (absolute zero in the Kelvin scale).
People in Ohio start saying, "Cold 'nuff for ya?"

@ -500 degrees
Hell freezes over.
The Browns win the Super Bowl!

Here are some techno-implementations I've been exploring lately to make my blogging a safer and more streamlined experience:

 

1)  Are you under attack by your employer for blogging on the job?  Then consider:

Ghostzilla:  The Camouflage Web Browser
For Total Screen Privacy

 

I’ve tried this and the claims it makes are true!  You can have a webpage open and active ‘within’ the application frame of Word, PowerPoint, or any application and by graying the text and stealthing the pics, Ghostzilla (a variety of Mozilla) makes the webpage appear as practically native to the open, ‘non-browser’ application.  But remember: though this might conceal your discreet, if not surreptitious, blogging activity on your desktop, if your employer is sniffing your network for nonwork-related surfing, this desktop cloak will not conceal you.

 

2)  http://beam.to

 

A very neat redirect service—due to it’s nifty name and remarkable brevity.

 

• Easy to change
  Your personal password offers you the possibility to change your Redirect URL or target-URL whenever you want.
  
• Easy to remember
  The most important thing on the web is that people know how to find you, especially when you are promoting your site in advertisements. With your Redirect URL you can make sure your website will be found.
  
• No charges
  This service is completely free.
  
• Immediate activation
  If you register now, your Redirect URL will be active within a few minutes.

 

I’ve just implemented a series of beam.to ‘s to make my life easier:

http://beam.to/nfp   my xanga!   (This is useful for checking on the page, but if it is used before actually logging into the blog, any subsequent login attempt from the redirected url will fail since the redirect fails to pass the login info along properly for authentication.  —in which case I just go back to www.xanga.com and login.)

http://beam.to/nfp1   my blogspot.

http://beam.to/nfp2  my livejournal

http://beam.to/nfp3  my greymatter (this is my only non-community based blog.  It is running both the blogging software and blogging database on my home PC server)

http://beam.to/nfp4  my deadjournal

http://beam.to/nfp5  my upsaid

http://beam.to/nfp6  my blurty

http://beam.to/nfpcam  my webcam

They are ‘dynamic sounding’,  very easy to remember, extremely short to type, and I can just substitute a single # at the end of any one of these to navigate to the next one.

I’ve even created beam.to ‘s for some of you  (hehehe) to ease my navigation to your blogs.  I rarely, rarely use bookmarks for xanga, but usually just end up typing out the whole url, eg., www.xanga.com/notforprophet (there’s no need, of course, to type the  ‘http://’  in today’s browsers).    That’s 27 keystrokes!  But if I’m already logged into xanga, and I want to navigate to read and comment on a site, typing, eg.,  beam.to/nfp  requires only 11 keystrokes!  Sure, a lot of blogging employs the convenience of hyperlinks. But when, out of the blue as I’ll often do, I want to visit certain friends’ sites, typing in  beam.to/xyz  instead of www.xanga.com/abcdefghijklm  proves, for me, rewardingly convenient.

Oh, by the way, what could I possibly have in mind in having so many different blogs?  Well, let's see...

Gloominous Doom?

Luminous Gloom?

Doomness on the Loose?

Luminous Loon?

 

is currently, nightly,

 

 

and

 

 

in a condo that serves as a distinguished collection of

 

 

 ,

 

, and

 

.

 

The most noteworthy piece of all is a

 

 

Chihuly –the ultimate master of freeforms, oceanforms, and macchia.

 

Slideshows of this artist's amazing work: here, here, and here.

Caught by surprise!  Xanga’s back up, and my pants are down.  Oh the shame, oh the indescribable naughtiness of this.

 

So let me pull my pants back up, tuck it back in, and attempt description at what’s been transpiring for the last few days…

 

Lady_Roxy!  oOMisFitOo!  Metaphrontister!  I metup in life ('real'?  -you might wonder, but what other can be embraced?) with these newly-three (to me) from amongst us all in the bloggable raw.  Did I pompously pimp?  Did I serenely trip?  Did I slide into a nor-eastern bank of beckoning virgin-fallen snow?  Did I throng gung-ho as if seeking an advertised Victoria Secrets' thong of culturally pre-disposed expectations?  Say: hell no.   Hell NO!!!  

 

I traveled from Cleveland, OH to Akron, OH last Friday night to concelebrate with these three:  Roxy as the spirited hostess, oO as the west coast priestess, and Meta as the east coast horizoning wit.

 

But the travel itself was punctuated: I got 'lost'.  And despite (or because of) getting 'refining' directions--all diverging--along the way from three local gas station attendants, lost, for while, I remained.  Until, finding myself landmarking outside of a Platinum Horse tiddy bar, I decided just to stop once more finally for directional elaboration, figuring that a bar bouncer should be well-trained in directing taxi-drivers where to escort the departing, tiddy-battered senseless.  So I asked the girl attendant at the gate for the bouncer.  But she told me the bouncer wasn't in yet.  When I asked her personally, then, for directions, she said "Oh no, not me, you want to talk to the bartender."  So she buzzed me into the pleasure den, and I assumed the position: sitting at the bar, beer in one hand, and glancing at the dance floor--occasionally.  Hey--but don't get the wrong idea: I was there on a mission (blued and godly).  And indeed, the bartender, when coaxed, proved to be an exqusite mapmaker, drawing directions to Roxy's house so precise that I started wondering if he had ever been there himself.  Of course, I tipped the pretty thing, yonder, stagecast,  in the thong at the end of the song, then...

 

I arrived like a long-time friend. And into the friendly abode of Roxy I sauntered, and under the roof of whimsy I unraveled.  I was…whoever they hugged, and laughed with, and cheated time with, and with the tantric energy-body explored.   After multiple shots of tequila and herbal indulgences of suchwhat, the challenge of opening spontaneously up on-whatever-level-encountered to one another was enjoined.  

 

Xanga, though our commonality pro forma, was wee in the conscious consideration.  For we(e) , assembled and precisely vibrant, were real-life grand.  Sarah (oOMisFitOo) began by sequencing our group energy into playful, personally interactive, intimate, non-sexual, self-discovering touching. No, no, no, we did not hold hands!   Instead we touchlessly tossed back and forth soft, selfless balls of energy.  And she and Avis (Lady_Roxy) by their forefingers alone made slalom slopes of outstretched forearms (Don’t even ask!).

 

What more to say, but that we were children shading in and out of the Light?  Too bright?  Hug me.  Too dark?  Sail free!  Then sinking our teeth all hungrily into the anchovy pizza.  hahayum.

 

Saturday presented the continuing challenge, to me, departed from the above-mentioned company and once again on my own, to resume the attitude and embrace the discipline of back-to-work steadfastness.  To put it simply: I’m currently, evening and weekends, painting/wallpapering a rather wealthy person’s condo den.  *pats self on the back for job well done*   But Sunday, omg, began with a spirit of reckless abandon (*blacks out*) yet ended, after a stretch of afternoon wallpapering, in an embracing and enlivening chat with a very special friend. 

 

 So there you have it: the mischievous orangutan crawling into the happy howler’s nest to eat the pumpkin pie. 

 

But remember this: winter serves an alibi for lover’s to rediscover true summer warmth in each others’ entangling embrace.