What have I been doing lately?  Learning to manage a Cisco PIX firewall and VPN Concentrator for a government agency.  Updating the Pianofest website for my friend who's the festival director.  Creating an online store upon, launching a Google Adwords campaign for, and aggressively promoting SugarPineDesigns, a quite artful quilt pattern site.  And, of course, running in the muck.

My front brakes started grinding last week on my Toyota RAV4.  I needed new rotors and pads, both sides.  Additionally, the mechanic cleaned and adjusted the rear brakes.  Total cost: $222 (only $90 labor).  I was just a bit shocked that it was that inexpensive.  The mechanic is very good, very cheap, and very fast.  He's got the rest of my business for life.

I believe this is the last of it.  In come the rooms.  Out goes the snow.  Right now for me, just such a mash of mish seems a fitting symbol for the cluttered eek of irrepresible life..

nfp (remixed) pie

A long, long time ago...

I can still remember how
That blogging used to make me smile.

And I knew if I could get the drop,
That I could make those people prop,
And maybe they'd be happy for a while…

But this March has made me quiver,
With every blog that I've delivered,
Bad news on the submit...
I couldn't get one more hit.

I can't remember if I cried
When Xanga stopped in middle stride,
But something touched me deep inside
The day the blogging died.

So...

Bye-bye this weblog’s stuck on retry,
Stripped my site down to bare min to see if I could squeek by,
While them XangaTeam boys were tweaking timeouts awry,
Confessing “Blame us if you need some fall guys,
Blame us if you need some fall guys.”

Did you write the Blog that Glows,
And can you trust those “ah’s” and “oh’s”
If the readers’ feedback tells you so?
 
Now do you see that rabbit's hole?
Can Alice help you lose control?
And can you show me how to grow small real slow?

Well, I know that you write on the whim
And when you post it’s either sink or swim,
You’re mind’s just something to lose…
But how you take those eProps in twos!

I was never just your average blogging shmuck,
I made Featured Content and I didn’t suck,
But I knew that I was out of luck
The day the blogging died.
 
I started screaming...

Bye-bye this weblog’s stuck on retry,
Stripped my site down to bare min to see if I could squeek by,
While them XangaTeam boys were tweaking timeouts awry,
Confessing “Blame us if you need some fall guys,
Blame us if you need some fall guys.”

If words be gone, then woes begone?  Ah no!  First crush the woes, then let the words resurface unburdened, re-blossomed. 

Or if you are a warrior, mount the words upon the field of battle like a piercing phalynx and skewer those woes most savagely. Rip them apart with the razor sharp, and leave them believe that they were most honorably self-dismissed by the dare of hari-kari.

T. B. I. F.

Hello?

We've been watching you closely.  And you're in a whole lot of trouble.  Better cut the crap now or pay the consequences.

*click*

Could I change the world by a simple personal campaign of making the above call anonymously and untraceably to telephone numbers at random? 

I know your initial reaction might be: "But that's just a prank."   But I'm serious.  Wouldn't those who are by merit unhaunted just brush it off?  And might not those who connive secretly to harm others have a second thought and desist?

On this day in 1913 Jack London wrote a letter to six famous writers of the day -- a list which included Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells -- to ask them what rates they were paid for their "stuff." London was a prolific, best-selling author but he was on the decline and in need of $100,000 a year to keep his projects, his philanthropy, and his personality going.

  - Today In Literature

Yeah, I need to keep my 'philanthropy' going, too.

There was once a blogger who was desperate for a job. He couldn't find one anywhere so, in his desperation, he went to the circus. The owner told him he didn't have a job for a blogger, but pointed to a bear costume in the corner of the room and said, "If you get in the bear costume and learn how to walk the tightrope, we could pay you $800 a month." The blogger needed the job, so he learned to walk the tightrope in costume.

The day of his debut finally arrived. The ringmaster told him, "Look, I've seen you practice, and you're good. But whatever you do, don't look down, because there is no net beneath you, and the lions are in the center of the ring." The blogger walked on the tightrope and was feeling confident. But halfway across, he couldn't resist looking down. Suddenly he felt dizzy and fell off. He landed in the center of the ring, and the lions roared and started to claw him. The man shriveled up in his costume and thought, "God! This is the end." Just then the lion closest to him looked down, lifted up his mask and said, "Don't worry. We're all bloggers, too."

it’s spring.
and if I were the rainman, greenman, no-one,
and could only know intimately of either
humanity/civilization/culture
or
starshine/earthshine/nature,
I’d have to say goodbye (goodbye)
to all of you (to all of you).

Apparently, a chat-bot named 'Nanniebot' has been designed to entice and reveal stalking pedophiles.  But the most amazing thing is that this bot is completely indistinguishable from a chatting human being.  The significance is: soon you'll never again know if the 'stranger' you're chatting with for the first time is a real person or a bot-agent.  Don't believe me?  Go here and look at the transcript of a typical 'Nanniebot' chat (bottom of the page) and see if you can tell the difference!

And in another breakthrough...  'Bloggiebot', anyone?!  Well, there is a fully-automated blogging service...here ! Just sign-up, it will update itself up to several times daily, and even link to other blogging bots.  Here's mine - my automated blogging clone ! ha Now I'll personally never need to blog again (and won't, if  its posts turn out to be better than mine).

Killing me with Science.  Now here's a search engine for the serious-minded: Scirus

Their blurb: 

Scirus is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 167 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly:

• Pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data on the Web.
• Find the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles and journals that other search engines miss.
• Offer unique functionalities designed for scientists and researchers.

My blurb: 

Search for 'breasts' and you'll get nothing JanetJackson-ized.  Search for 'pussy' and you'll get good science on pussy willows and pussy cats but not a single mention of I-bet-I-know-what-you're-thinking.  If you search on my last name you'll get 12 links to my academic teaching history and all my scientific publications (you'll just have to take my word on this).  Search for 'love' and, well, okay, so it isn't perfect!  ha   But it's still the best damn scientific/medical search engine there is.

I've coined a new word:  pressinglove.  pressin' glove?  yeah, right!

Today, I lunched with the president of my organization.  It was a informal, small-group  discussion/lunch of selected employees designed to elicit our views on the organization. During the preliminary go-around of self-introductions, we were all asked to state our ‘favorite food’.   There were several ‘chicken’, ‘chocolate’, rice pudding’, ‘pizza’ short-type of responses.  But when it came my turn, I elaborated:

"My very favorite food is anything I can forage.  But I never do mushrooms, mostly veggies.
My second favorite food is anything I can grow: tomatoes, squash, etc.  Though I don’t grow things often.
My third favorite food is free food, like today’s meal.
My least favorite food is food that I have to pay for."

I just love to extol in public.

. . . the very best addictive drugs are produced by our bodies when we're in romantic/erotic love.
— Barbara Sher,  "It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now"

China Targets Weblogs in Censorship Bid : "The crackdown comes days after China approved an amendment to its constitution to, for the first time, say that the state respects and protects human rights."  ha

"The first step is to find out what you love -- and don't be practical about it. The second step is to start doing what you love immediately, in any small way possible. I've seen what happens to people when they get to do what they love.  They light up. They glow. They have a kind of energy that's wonderful."

  --Barbara Sher

I so need to heed this advice.  Damn practicality, full glow ahead.

The Harshness of Spring

I’m stalking the forest but ignoring the trees
That scream “press your body against me, imbed, rape me.”
I’m after mud puddles, actually.
Going to stomp them into a splish-splash percussion,
Tramp and splatter them like a White Russian
Upon a Mongol-bred steed that prances irreverently
Making a muck.

So I fuck up the forest.
It’s shit out of luck.

I’m not going to be too clever today.  I’m just going to see what comes my way.  Allow my mind to sharpen itself without contrivance.  Take what’s given: sun, fresh air, punctuations of unconstrained time.  A bystander might look and see me looking nowhere nondescript and not know why.  It’s unimportant.  Much is happening all about.  It’s spring. 

And a pretty girl just passed by me carrying a cup of coffee out of a coffee shop, looked at me smiling her broad smile, asked me friendly-sorts how I was doing, and I smiled back “Fine.” 

And so goes the day: appreciating the shadows as evidence of the light.

We often just assume who are audience is out here in blogland.  Or at least believe we have a good idea.  But I'm not so sure anymore.

So to cover the bases, I'd like to say 'hi' to the alien spacecraft that's intercepting my wireless satellite transmission before relaying it on to the next hop (even before it hits the xanga server).  And I'd like to say 'howdy' to the chimp playing on his experimental PC who just URLed this up.  I'd like to give a big yell out the NSA intelligence officer who's been assigned to scan my posts, hope you enjoy.  And a huge 'woo-hoo' to the saddened psychic who my blog has found some way to extrasensorily-energetically clog.  A 'giddy-up' goes out to the Google searcher who will stumble upon this while searching for the string 'perverted thrills'.  And a 'hi-five' to the watcher or watchers who never comment but have me in their 'dead pool' and are just waiting for me to croak (at least, at least , blogingwise).  But most of all, I'd like to wish a 'get-out-there-and-kick-some-ass' to any and all who may read this post (or even have their personal mega-monolith Cray robot spider and digest it) in some fuzzy information over-saturated future when I'm no longer around and, frankly, don't give a chimp-hopping, alien-intellig3nce, psychic-thrilling, death-wishing damn about it any more (or, maybe do but even  more) .

"The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.  The device is of no value to us."

   - Western Union internal memo, 1876

 867-5309 .

The World (Wireless) Web is the greater part of my cognitive home, even if it is not my noetic bed.  So what time I have available, away from life’s otherwise pressing concerns, I spend here.  As a consequence of this predilection, I can be considered movie theater-deprived, book-impoverished, and TV-divested.  Radio, at least, I still catch while riding around in my vehicle.  On the other hand, I’ve taken the web itself mobile, both as a surfer and provider of consumable presentations, into locations where it was previously unknown: chatting and blogging from a cemetery under a full moon on a Halloween night, blogging and cam-broadcasting down I-90 with a fellow blogger in Norway (toreibjo) telling me to “turn left, turn right”, webcamming another fellow blogger’s (Roxy’s) birthday party out about town, posting photos to my Buzznet photo strip (above) from my camera phone while I run, …basically, just being ‘web-able’ wherever I go.  Almost all my blog posting is done mobile (wireless/satellite), though most of my commenting is done from home (which explains while I’ve commented so little lately—I’m rarely there.)  Yep, I’m pretty much ‘out here’: enriched with the web, deprived most otherwise, depraved regardless.

Yet, from time to time, I do buy e-books and read them on the go.  And while I still don’t have the time to download lengthy movies and watch them, I’ve just learned of a site that offers a library of movie trailers from all the major studios.  Some say that many times a movie trailer is even better than the movie itself.  While I most often won’t be able to confirm that since I’ll not likely start watching movies in profusion soon, I’ve decided at least to start watching trailers as an online pastime.   The site is Apple’s Quicktime Movie Trailers.  In my mind, it only takes two cars to make a train: the engine and the caboose.  And while a trailer may not present a full synopsis of a movie, at least it gives you the gist of its movement. 

But, no, I’ve never, nor will ever, ‘read’ a book by perusing just the first and last page.

~lingum icicle~

~green harbingering of spring~

Dreamland Dam: largest concrete-poured dam east of the Mississippi
entirely self-contained within the cemetery

Woo-hoo I've stolen the Magic Sticks!

I’ve got to break out of this puffy mind of mine that’s crowding out thoughts with sterile foam filler.  Or is it Cheezeless Cheating Cheetos that are jamming the conduits of my inspiration, finding and filling a newly abscessed brain niche like exotic insects hoping to win the world over with their over-brooding gratuitous ubiquitousness?  I need a good kick in the head with loving feet, damn it.  I need toes that smell like roses to tickle my nose until I sneazingly spew up the fluff wadding constrained within my congested cranium.  Or maybe I could just fall off my chair and crack my head.  Like Humpty Dumpty lie there and let whatever needs to ooze away ooze, but rely on the duct tape and velcro that Humpty never had to put myself together again.  I need to find a good, used trocar on eBay and a reliable set of online instructions on how to perform self-surgery on one’s own head in a mirror.  I need to lose this contrivance of a bloated, overfed self-consciousness stuffed to the full.  I need the mind-fuck of some total other attraction.  I need to disappear on the trail of a weird and wonderful out-of-this-world allure.

I was going to write a post about the meaning of fame and how it relates to blogging, and Xanga in particular.  Search for a profound spin, depict it as either ephemeral or a sensation of more significance, and posit a place for it properly within our evolving cultural milieu. 

I was going to expand upon this comment (edited) that I left for another:

I'm not sure 'celebrity' status on xanga (for those who have approached it) is really ‘pseudo’.  I think it might, in some cases, actually be an instance of 'micro-celebrity' status, i.e., someone with a publicly celebrated status making a real impact but only upon a small coterie of people.  As such, it almost resembles a nascent soft cultishness, the seed, if properly watered, of something that could turn out like James' west-coast 'ministry'.  Of course, it need not turn out so.  I, too, once had a taste of this xanga micro-celebrity status and just let it slip away toward oblivion.    Oh well, amazingly, I still have a life! (hrm...I might turn this last paragraph into a blog, what do you think?)

But how does one even limit or define ‘micro-celebrityhood’?

How many readers must you have?  Or how many readers that visit and leave comments on a regular basis?  Or how highly rated must you be regularly in the Featured Content?

Or is it the impact you make on your readers?  And then how do you measure that—by the intensity of their comments?  By whether or not they imitate you?  Or whether they band together, either informally or formally, to urge you on for sake of their next ‘must-fix’ of you?

Or perhaps the recipe for celebrated success is a dash of each of the measures above?  Then, how large the dashes?

Well, when it comes to ‘micro’, there’s no lower limit.

So if you have even just one reader who really loves you, you’re a blogging microstar.

I’m hoping you all find that special reader soon, if not already. 

Unless, of course, you abhor adulation.  In which case, you’ll find that the blocking option works just as well upon idolaters as flames.

What a strangeness always the world brings when you open yourself up to it vastly!  No room for routine as each succeeding surprise washes upon you like a tingling ocean wave.  One learns how foolish mundane *expectations* can be.  One learns to live like a tourist in a potentially predatory universe…

The 'Side Dish' (over there -->) will be up for the duration of xanga's upgrade.  If the patient goes into a coma, at least I'll be able to keep a vigil there.

Everybody's human.  Except...

I thought I made a mistake once, but I was wrong.  Of course, then I realized that thinking I had made a mistake was a mistake.  So I was right!  But if I was right, I would have made the mistake prior to even thinking, which clearly wasn't the case and, in any case, is unthinkable.  Yet if the notion of 'not thinking' in this matter is yet thinkable (as it must be, even if not do-able, otherwise what is going on?), could not the notion of being 'wrong' be right by anticipating itself?  And does this not explain why, as a species, we all have sex in our heads?  And also why, when we do have sex, we lose our heads?

The Previously Unrealized Homogeneity of My Childhood Upbringing

I just realized that the “A-B-C” song, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, and “Baa Baa Blacksheep” all carry the same exact melody.

I’m in shock with awe: My childhood was nearly mono-melodic and I wasn’t even mindful of it.

It’s also the same tune used in an old French childhood song called  “Ah! Vous dirais-je, Maman”

Ah ! vous dirais-je, Maman,
Ce qui cause mon tourment
Papa veut que je raisonne,
Comme une grande personne.
Moi je dis que les bonbons
Valent mieux que la raison

(Ah! I would tell you, Mom
what causes my torment.
Papa wants me to reason
Like an adult.
Me, I say that candy
Is worth more than reason.)

Now I want some candy.  Gimme some.

At least I learned the “The Bear Went Over The Mountain” as a sole source of variety in my younger years.

*thinks about it, begins to blur and involutedly self-doubt*

Please, someone, reassure me that the Bear song isn’t the same as the others!