Why are such bizarre things are happening?  And why is the world getting even stranger?

It seems CNN is now selling T-shirts based on their own online news headlines: "Teens getting high on mostly legal plant..." , "'It's fun to do bad things,' says joyrider, 7", "Katja! Baby giraffe takes first steps" . 

Oh.  And an Austrian woman, now 42, has just escaped a dungeon where she was held for 24 years by her father, where she was constantly raped, and forced into bearing at least 7 children by her father, 3 of which have lived their entire lives in the dungeon also.  By the way, the father lived on the floor above the dungeon, with his wife - who purportedly knew nothing (for 24 years) about what was going on, and with 3 of the daughter's children (adopted by the mother and father), all of whom also never knew their mom and 3 other siblings lived in the dungeon below.  Well, at least they can't say "Only in America."

Osama bin Laden is about to be apprehended in a cave.

My doorbell just rang and there was nobody there.

And why am I still hungry even though I just ate a huge mid-afternoon meal?

And just as bizarre in Chinese:

not going to worry about the past, or agonize over the future.  i am going finish work and then spend the rest of the day trying to enjoy little wondrous things of life.

I awoke this morning to an awareness that I no longer have a beguiling Temptress.  I live in the midst of a thoroughly sex-oversaturated culture and am temptress-bereft?  wtf.  Ulysses had his Sirens.  Samson had his Hedy Lamarr, I mean, Delilah.  Even Bill Clinton had his Monica.  Glenn Beck may be right: these could be the Last Days.

Chinese auto-translation below is seriously faulted:  how could they not know who Hedy Lamarr is?

I have this day, for the first time in a long time, seen my world for exactly what it is and not as a composite of its somewhat reality and what I seem ever to yearn and desire it to be.  To do so, I forcefully (by an act of intrepid self-will ) extracted myself from the calculations of all earthly passion and imagined myself the Fonz.  Yes, the Fonz outdeities the Wizard, for the Fonz never hid behind a sliding curtain and orange obfuscating smoke.

The forces of evil are weakening.  I know so because they are now again whispering above the level of sublimity in my psychic-awareness realm.  Thus, this morning towards dawn yet in the hold of lucid dreaming, I heard the evil ones' chattering.  "He has nothing to gain, therefore he'll soon conclude he has nothing to lose.  Of course, he has everything to lose.  But he will, in errant desperation, grow reckless, fuck up again, and embrace his fulminated ruin."   Well, that just pisses me off.  What do they mean "He has nothing to gain..."? 

To quote Groucho: "I have nothing to lose but my chains.  I have a world to win."  Groucho and John Lenin: what a dynamic duo.

The following is, in my estimation, a brilliant autotranslation into Chinese of the above:

Good morning.  But who's to blame?

I am moving.  Far, far away.  At least it seems.  But I am unmoved by all the commotion I am creating.

Yet I am moving.  Going to finish a beer and back up the Budget truck and resume hauling all this baggage screaming to accompany me.  I have today, tomorrow, and Monday to complete the task.

Ah, what do the Taoists say?  "Never carry excess baggage."

Okay.  Time to get started again.

Following is an automated translation into Chinese.  In my estimation, it sucks.

很感人。至目前为止，已为期不远。至少，它似乎。但是，我为之所动所有commotion我创造的。

不过，我很感动。去完成一项啤酒及背部整个财政预算案的卡车，并恢复拖这一切行李尖叫陪伴我。我有今天，明天，周一才能完成这项任务。

啊，做什么道士，说什么呢？ "从来没有携带超重行李费。 "

好了。时间可以重新开跑。

There is a disconnect between this, all this, and myself in real life.  A developing, broadening disconnect.  There have been signs suggesting such for a while, but they were signs that I chose to ignore since they were indications that appealed more to my emotions than my reason, more to feeling than to knowing.  But last week I could no longer resist acknowledging the rift as the true dimensions of its extension and  the rate of its expansion came clearly to me in a vision.  And that’s precisely it: visions.  I am being whelmed over by visions once again.  They come especially as I run, alone, in the cold, at sunset in the cemetery (which I often refer to as Dreamland).  And with the visions are voices or, perhaps, just a single voice.  It’s hard to distinguish whether the whispers are from a lone warbler or are a blended chorus provisioning themselves in unison.

Last Thursday while running, a whisper: “It’s a lie.”   Altered reality, heightened perception ensued.  Before I could respond with unmoving lips “What’s a lie?”,  the vision.  Kicked-in.  Kicked down the door of unknowing.  I ‘saw’ things even as my heart protested they couldn’t be true.  Dark things.  Things that must and have already begun to change my life.  Yet in this vision there was also hope, of sorts, I suppose.  The voice (or another voice? voices?) whispered: “You are a king, you know.”  That while running between row upon row of graves.  Goosebumps.  Immediately my gait lengthened, my back straightened, my eyes searched everything everywhere, and the pain, the pain that has chronically accompanied me on these runs for pretty much the last 9 months, went away.  What did I see?  A pair, two brothers, both Norsemen, running the very same ground as I was upon.  They were ancient yet alive, shaggily-clothed and running in a snowstorm.  Intrepid they were and disregarding of all comfort. And then I realized …  they were running through the winter!  I mean literally that: I discerned their intent to ‘run through’ the cold and darkness of the grisly season unstoppingly.  Suddenly a shift of vision.  I lost track of one of the ancient ones.  And I ‘became’ the other one.  I saw myself as I ran as the lone brother that was left.  Left behind.  Left afar.  Left to run.  Through the winter.  Unto Spring.  And then the feeling of being a genuine king flooded my consciousness.  And an enlightenment followed: I, in visionary embodiment of that ancient Norse king, have been left to seek.  Simply seek. 

Chinese translation follows:

I am tired of things 'Xanga'.  Make no mistake: I am not tired of using Xanga, I'm just tired of thinking about blogging about Xanga itself, its features, its quirks, its failures.  I am tired of 'Recommendations' that are Xanga-centric.  I am tired of contributing to Xanga's Xangacentricism.

So. I will now leave the discussion of all things Xanga in my past.  I will leave such things as an ever-more distancing characteristic of my former blogging atavar, the one who was destined but had not yet discovered its portal to next becoming, its dream door to a beatified and numinously more expressable life awareness.

Simplified, automated Chinese translation:

There really are no 'new' usernames or accounts on Xanga.  All of the names/accounts, from the very moment of Xanga's creation, were anticipated, pre-cloned, and just awaiting a request for use.  Don't believe me?  Well, here's test.  If you believe your account was created after the year 2002, then go here.  You'll discover not only that it existed even back then but that it was being celebrated in a most amazing way.  And for those xangarelics with older accounts, go there anyway: I bet you missed the celebration the first time around.

Either a Chinese translation of the above or a bunch of question marks (?????? - for non-compliant browsers) follows:

Watch yourself.  See your blog-energy grow.  See it emerge and latch onto your ISP.

Then you come, like the movie Groundhog's Day, to Xanga, again and forever again. 
By 'Favorite Bookmark.'  Or by typing the URL in.  Or by recursing browser history and selecting the unresistable destination....Xanga.com.

You arrive at The Login and, if you're not already addictively 'Remembered', you unnaturally type in your username and password as pittance-part of a mindless ritual in compliance with a well-crafted, will-forfeiting cyber-seduction.

Then... you are IN.  As I am IN.

And we become Xanga.  We ARE Xanga.

It's all just our pleasant prison dream, you know.  What's your xanga inmate number?  I'm a recidivist with no hope of parole and that's why i'm digging a reality tunnel out of here.

Wipe your hand.  Across what?  Your face?  My face?  My Space?  Your Xanga?  Your ass?

The actual world and its saving words will always be more directly just between you and me.  It really is just you and me.  Or, cetainly otherwise, you and someone more real than me.  You and someone more-immediately-imaginable-to you,  much more deserving of you, and much more worthy than this old oz-straw-stuffed me.  (It happens all the time, ya know. )

Tired to hell of this binaried and surrogately-internetized part of your routinized life?  Want to escape this Xanga Penitentiary?

The cell door is open.  It has always been open.  As open as your mind.  And here's the most amazing thing: we can continue blogging  as sure as the posted inmate in my and your Xanga prison bed is just a Shawshank Redemption puffed-up pillow. waxed-up face, and contoured blanket-blog made to resemble our imprisoned zombie-xanga-personality.

Thus may we become true friends and laughingly fuck-off this blog intermediary ding-a-thing.

{Chinese auto-translation follows.  If you see just ??????s, then you don't have the Chinese language browser plug-in!  But don't worry.  English still rules!)