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.").