I was one of the first bloggers here back in the year 2000. Now it appears I remain one of the last.

May all true Xangans forever be well !

...that this is still here.  Kind of feels like a property with a house no longer lived in but merely kept as part of an investment portfolio.  Still, greetings to any who remain or visit here.

Update: ...that this is still here! (11/9/2024)

Love conquers all.

An update from Biz Stone, aka Genius , on his days with Xanga:

Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently when you were first starting up?
A: My first startup was called Xanga.com. When we started that company back in 1999, the company culture started to veer off from what I liked, so I quit -- instead of realizing that I could have worked to change the company culture. After I quit I was immediately sorry, I felt like I was on the wrong side of the screen.  And since then I've become a huge advocate for treating your company culture like a product. If you don't take charge of it, then something will happen that you don't have control over. Everything ultimately worked out, but I would advise people [in that position] to work to turn it around.

-  http://www.entrepreneur.com/video/242995

Where have I been?!  To the egg-shaped, fast-spinning (must be hardboiled) dwarf planet Haumea.  But others are saying Ceres is much more exciting.

Today, Awra Damon, a sexy-powerful CNN correspondent for the Middle East, while talking on CNN about the assault on ISIS, said "Kurdish Turds, I mean, Turkisk Kurds."  I leave my TV on all night and heard that subliminally around 4 AM and laughed myself awake for the rest of the day.

Bound to be Classic!   She, not her verbal indiscretion.

Does anyone deny that Xanga (whoever the fuck that is now - John Hiler, the original CEO type) has certainly legally changed his name and every other xangagod has already been assassinated) has ripped us off and continues to lie to us?

I didn' think so.

Yeah, I missed a 't" there.

I think that Xanga was sold dirt cheap to Al Qaeda dirt cheap (yes, that's repetitive) as an esoteric control communications back-channel.

I have evidence!

Where the fuck is the NSA when you don't need them?!

Calling NSA, yes NSA (keyword, mutherfuukr):  Xanga is positioned to remain a post-terrorist, post tri-unislamic conspiracy.

I have proof.

100 proof is 50% alcohol.

Hook up with me.

I am, of course, good for the first round.

Sept 3, 2003 - the day 2.0 announced its new "Official 2.0 Launch".

Sept 4, 2014 -  the day 2.0 disappears forever without any notification to anyone whatsoever.

(imagine the voice of FDR...) "A day that will live in infamy for social networking throughout the cyber-eons."

Not really.  They have already cleared the legal ramifications of the  shutdown with their North Korean paralegal online-hired cyber-intern.

"Nuke it!"  was the decisive Kim Jong Un-ian Orphan Black (cloning) compelling command from a Windows 95 OS workstation sourcing from a 30 minute-leased cyber-kiosk endpoint in Pyongyang.

Cool.  Some North Korean communication are permitted outbound to the most moribund sectors of the capitalist internet!

In any case, that's a third of a year from now. Far longer than the projected life of a fruit fly (nine days).

Did you know it takes at least eighteen days (twice the life of a fruit fly)  to make something a habit?

-http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/09/how-long-to-form-a-habit.php

Eat plenty of fruit daily in the meantime.  Make it a habit!

But don't plan to fly this ill-fated 2.0 flight beyond the Sep 4th recording capabilities of an ultimately-doomed, cyber-oceanic, no-longer-cyber-beaconing Davy Jones Locker blackout.

Unless you wish me to run real imaginary circles around your disappearance through the ever-confounding meta-oceanic crypts of a real, cyber-popularized  cemetery deemed in everlasting multi-dimensional, multi-sensory lore as "Dreamland".

"Dream other dreams, and better!"   - advised "The Mysterious Stranger", Chapter 11, Mark Twain:  http://www.classicreader.com/book/1370/11/

But you: dream better, you deserve, you must, than Mark Twain ever did so imagine.

I am strapping back in time, exchanging this for that, and falling into possession of the most youthful energy .  I am visualizing a game called Musical Chairs.  Are you all familiar with it?  

It’s a game where the players are dispatched walking to music (and why not dancing?  why not dancing ?) around a seating of chairs and when the music stops, the players must all grab the nearest seat to avoid elimination.  How elimination?  It’s arranged by the rules that there is always one less seat than players—and any excess seats are removed from the floor.  Hence, there will always be an odd prancer out when the music ends.  And that prancer is eliminated.

As a child, I utterly hated this game.  For me, it was the essence of terrorism: A world where it was imagined that humanity cannot find a plenitude of co-existing niches, but must overflow all boundaries of civility by essentially mandating an ownership-incompatibility, the termination of which was essential to fair continuance of the game.

You know: I never won at that game.  Never won.  At all.  Because I totally  embraced the anti-terror of non-participation, at least in my heart.  As an alibi.   To dance away.

the wind’s in my ears
and it’s all that i hear
now the voice of love
has departed.

swoooooooooshing white
fressshhhly venting
sussurant, sustaining
soft whistling
sea breezing
zephyr

its incessant near-sensuous suspiration
supplants the sweet nothings of yesterday.

some say you can find the ocean
held hostage
in a conch’s murmur.

yet it is
in the wind’s whisper
i now find you
unheld.

After a 26 year hiatus, i have invested money once again to learn to speak and read Chinese better.  Should i ever become an Edward Snowden-type, i could then flee to Beijing!

Beer brewed in a bourbon barrel is better than bourbon aged in a bourbon barrel, if you prefer beer.

i have been time-traveling and mind-mending with my teenage self.  i actually planned to do this in my teenage years at the age at which i have now attained.  It's beautiful when such plans come together.  By the way, you can't buy "the way".

i may be making six figures, but i am no where near making Barbie's six figures (391833) - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/life-size-barbies-shocking-dimensions-photo-would-she-be-anorexic/.  If Barbie with those six figures is considered anorexic, then I with my six figures must be categorized as starving.

This is the way Xanga ends

This is the way Xanga ends

This is the way Xanga ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

oH DAMN. I wanted to sign up for another exciting Xanga site but to my frightful dismay, when I went to the "Join In" page - https://xanga.crowdhoster.com/relaunch-xanga - , the "Join In" button was disabled. That might explain why the number of backers has stayed constant at 1,175 for weeks. We are now a closed, gated community. Cozy, isn't it?

On the Xanga Help front, "Eugenia" is the only one left helping; John seems to have disappeared about a month ago. But "Eugenia" has helped about 10 customers (or former customers) in the last week! That's pretty awesome for a site that is doomed. I wonder if John said, "Eugenia, here's the couple of thousand bucks left after Xanga bought me my Copper Parachute. Keep 'the promise' going by for the next year (until the subscriptions expire) by throwing out a Help comment every day or so. Unto the nearly-comatose subscribers that remain, be Xanga's distant ambulance siren in the night."

Awesome!

I just posted this at the end of the Xanga article on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanga#Xanga_2.0

As of November 2013, new users can no longer join Xanga via Xanga's only current user solicitation at Crowdhoster. The "Join In" buttons are now no longer functional and the number of "backers" has been constant at 1,175 for several weeks. Xanga is clearly doomed. Only its date of proximate closure is still unannounced.

I'm awesome, too!

Let's see if Xanga is paying attention.

Let's admit it. Xanga lied to us...

Phase 2. Site tuning

We’ll also work with anyone whose data didn’t make it over to get them onto the new system as quickly as possible! We’ll be streamlining this process over the next week…

Let's see.

The dust has not only already settled, it has turned into sedimentary rock beneath our feet.

Load? There is no load! Xanga is one of the fastest sites on the internet because there is virtually no load.

Well, there's one load: the load of bullshit that Xanga fed us with this startup.

Working with anyone? Xanga has "worked" with only about 60 former bloggers over the last two weeks informing them, that "sorry", they must pay to blog. Their response? No response.

This Xanga feels like a cemetery with minimal staff eugenia acting as a caretaker to make sure our graves are not disturbed.

“Don’t be the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him.”

-Jelaluddin Rumi

I actually totally forgot about Xanga for a week. Totally. But I am not sorry. There is practically no one left to apologize to.

Another change: Xanga appears to have severed its connection with Quantcast.com. With Quantcast you could track actual daily visitors. Fewer and fewer, day by day. But Xanga has now blinded us from even this insight. They either "unsubscribed" or the subscription ran out and wasn't renewed or they went "private" so the public can no longer see their traffic trends. Quantcast was Xanga's cardiac monitor, and ever since Xanga 2.0, the monitor had been near "flat-lining". Perhaps this signifies an imminent passage: Flat-line. Shrill alarm. The monitor has been turned off.

Listen. What is the sound of one blogger blogging? "x-a-n-g-a" !

The government has shut down. Does this mean I don't have to send the IRS a check for my past taxes? I want a tax refund!

Thank you all, out there -afar- somewhere, for the wonderful blogging engagement I've enjoyed for the past 13 years here. Ah! Dios!

(not to be in any manner confused with "Adios.")

I think the current defining issue for John and Xanga is that they are still collecting complaints from potentially money-spending Xangans on their horribly static portal Help page. It is their spider web for gathering complaints and raking in more money from daily stragglers who return surprised and then decide to pay the $48 to get their blog back. So though it is terrible and socially-constraining for us not to have an interactive portal page, it is good for Xanga’s bottom line.

I don’t believe they think they can draw potentially paying stragglers back through a simple link or box on an interactive front page. If returning stragglers got to see (interactively) how little of their social friendship base remains, they might not be enticeable to pay to return to blog. So Xanga has erected a cyber-curtain and teases non-payers that there is something great going on behind the curtain. And I don’t believe the xangagods have figured out how to have “xanga.com” interactive for current members but redirect to a static Help/Problem page for potential members. With some work, it could be designed. But we are talking about a commitment to hard work that’s little evident anymore.

It is hard for me to imagine community here any longer. There is no growth, no change. It feels as featureless and futureless as the government-imposed Indian reservations from the 1800's must have felt to the relocated tribes.

But maybe I am being too harsh. Some Indian reservations, after all, have survived into the 21st century featuring lucrative casinos and an endless count of satellite liquor stores. Seedy lifestyle. But maybe xanga's onto something...if it can survive and evolve over a couple of centuries.

Damn ("f") John CEO. And damn "f" edlives, the loudmouth mouthpiece for 2.0 migration before the migration but now nowhere to be responsibly found.

Promises, promises. And now they only give us this overly constrained WordPress coffin in a pauper's graveyard for us to bury ourselves in.

2.0 is sooooooo dysfunctional that it had less than 500 visits from the whole world yesterday. The fuckin' whole internet world!

Out of 1,260 current outstanding requests for Help, John answered only 2 in the last 24 hours. At that rate John, it will only take 3.5 years for you or the xangateam, John, to answer all the rest of the outstanding Help requests. And that, providing there are no new ones. But there well may not be since almost all are giving up hope for this fiasco.

When Xanga first emerged in the year 2000, I "discovered" John and all the other xangagods and put pressure on John and all the other xangagods to out themselves from their non-communicative, not-very-well-disguised hiddenness and take public administrative responsibility for this site. And they did. And the fuckin' site flourished. Of course, they never publicly thanked me. You're welcomed.

Now, there is no possible appeal to him/them. They have their 2.0 money. They are disappearing again, for good, fleeing this ill-conceived business fantasy they attempted to re-launch. Visits here are flatlining like a rock attached to a heart monitor in an ER. Flatter, more rock-like, everyday. There is no way they are going to bust their asses to serve the 250 daily visitors that will come here one month from now. Or the 125 daily funeral parlor visitors that come to pay their respects two months from now.

If I post no more, it is because Xanga 2.0 is crawling like extra-cosmic molasses in response time. I wonder if John et crew have not cut back on the inital 2.0 server resources to save money after realizing this is a total, dismal, unpopulated failure.

This place - xanga - it's just a dive anymore.

dive - a bar that is sleazy, poorly maintained and in overall bad shape.

"The "High Noon Saloon" is a real dive bar. Whenever it rains, you're bound to be ankle-deep in wastewater and so might just as well piss where you sit."

Here's something interesting: Ever wonder where you rank by profile creation date in Xanga's 13 year history? If you leave a complaint or a comment on the Xanga Help - Unresolved page, you can hover over your name's link and see the numbered rank attending to your initiation. John, for instance, is number 53. I came in at 4,812. Just prowling around, I found someone else at 38,453,350. To think that Xanga has had probably over 40,000,000 users through its history but now has only 300 visitors a day is plain divey!

General Xanga 2.0 stats:

331: the number of people who visited Xanga on 9/13/2013.

951: the number of paid subscriptions for the one year that xanga 2.0 will exist.

1207: the number of unresolved requests for Help to Xanga 2.0

23: the number of resolved requests for Help to Xanga 2.0

0: my estimate of the number of new members that Xanga 2.0 has enticed.

Personal Xanga stats:

13: the number of years I have blogged here (13 years in December).

2586: the number of posts during those 13 years.

202: the average number of yearly posts over those 13 years (most early on, fewer as the years grew tall).

42,224: the number of comments left by you over those 13 years.

16: the average number of comments left on my posts over those 13 years.

I think that less than 150 peeps have blogged a new blog so far on the new Xanga 2.0.  Hard to tell because our access here is so horribly insular and disconnected from others.  But it's my best guest as a past graduate school college professor of quantitative analysis (statistics).

In other words, if you went to a large high school, about 1/3 of your graduating class--scattered all around the world--is now investing in expressing itself here.  Hope you were popular in high school.

September 11th's near-mortem stats from Quantcast, Xanga's official stat keeper:

Every day...fewer and fewer and fewer.  Even the number of complainers who were registering their complaints with xanga's Help (http://help.xanga.com/) that they lost legitimate Premium/Subscribed access is diminishing.  Not because they got the Help they sought.  But because an overwhelming numbers of their complaints have not been addressed by John and his minimal remaining xanga staff.  And those so disenfranchised by xanga are prevalently just giving up.

Xanga is no longer even a little town with one stop light.  Or a township with one stop sign at an intersection.  It's a short stretch of country road with no lights or intersections.

But you know what?  For those of us left, meeting by chance or divine design alongside this country road in a country cornfield with little traffic and no lights but starlight could prove extremely intimate.

Unfortunately, Xanga 2.0 went from a daily "high" of 1894 users on Sep 4th to just 476 on Sep 10th. There is a definite downward trend, less now every day. (The daily high on the "old" Xanga over the past year was about 160,000.)

Many of the 476 are users who can't access their blogs and go to the Help page to complain.

Of 800 registered requests for help, 15 have been marked resolved. There are numerous genuine-sounding complaints where people claim they are Premium or have contributed to the Fundraiser but still can't get back on their blog.

Woe is Xanga.

In other news, my wife learned yesterday, after a full body Pet (positron emission tomography ) scan, that she is now free of cancer after many, many years of chemo and having just undergone two lung surgeries. And my grandson, Artie, has started preschool.

Rusty, my Boston Terrier pup, demonstrates his musical acumen.

Just playing with fonts and colors.
Xanga's new limitations
are refereshing my html
skills.

There are over 1000 requests for help logged already. Only one has been marked resolved. I don't think they will ever catch up.

According to Xanga's official Quantcast subscription, daily people visiting on Friday, Sep 6th, dropped from 80,000 to 1,039 – a little more than just 1% of who was here just prior to relaunch.

More disturbingly, the 1,039 on Friday is a drop from 1,894 on Wednesday – the new site is already trending downwards, though a few days may be too short to discern a true trend.

Hey, there is something horribly funny going on in the comment area...

The official Xanga Quantcast histogram

Xanga subscribes to Quantcast - here's the public visitor results.

Daily people visiting on Friday the 6th dropped from 80,000 to 1,039 - a little more than just 1% of who was here just prior to relaunch.

More disturbingly, the 1,039 on Friday is a drop from 1,894 on Wednesday - the new site is already trending downwards, though a few days may be too short to discern a true trend.

Where's everybody? This place feels like a desert island - no longer the thriving metropolis it was of old.

Where's the portal page drawing us altogether? Where's the compass to old stomping grounds?

Xanga Hong Kong was Xanga's hotbed. But it appears that little thought was given to migrating its users (from http://help.xanga.com/topic/premium-account-that-was-not-migrated):

Hi John,

I found that you are answering the question here. I have paid $48 and I would like to have my blog back at cat_newlife@xanga.com. I desperately need you to help.

I really have no idea about xanga closing now as I am in the Hong Kong xanga which there are actually no notices shown at the front page until last Sunday. However, it was already too late for me to do anything.

The blog is really important to me as I have written letters to someone I love on the blog for 3 years. The "letters" are never seen by the person but I plan to show him in a right time.

I hope you could help to save them. Thank you so much.

Best regards,
Carmen

cat_newlife 0 points
2 days ago

In great ocean chasms
orgasmic currents churn
to return 
                to the surface
all the organics that

life puts to purpose.

The oceans and space

                intermingle, interface

much more intimately
than the rock of planets
alone can possibly do

under a star’s effusive

                steady spew

of incandescent karma.

Yet though we are born to crawl

this sphere of lith

we cleanse ourselves

of its signature:

                 filth
with copious submissions to sea.

Likewise, Earth bathes itself

by tiding its waste

and thereupon procuring

                 a taste

of the rarest of all cosmic notions:

seduction by an ocean.

 I, too, know I’ll fade to sky someday
like a puddle disappearing.
The drink of wetness held within
Is much too shallow, spread too thin
to postpone the fatal fearing.

So let us churn while churn we can

as liquid woman and lithic man

And let me dip while yet I stay

                with a plop and splash

and chance to play

in the motion of  your ocean.

1.
35.
36.

damn.  almost every other reference is to a xanga admin god.

of course, once xanga goes off air, almost every reference here becomes a dead link.  xanga, on Wikipedia, is doomed: with everything a dead link, its history will be scrubbed.  way to flame out and to burn the books, xanga!

or maybe, just maybe, Xanga 2.0 will keep the links alive for a little while in service to its own history. kind of like what ghosts try to do after the light of life has moved along.

Where is my wish list boast?  My dream ship host?   My making of the most?

 Things were better when I lived in my childing imagination more.  There, even if there wasn’t actuality, there was inspiration.  There was poetry.  For the envisaging, for the feeling, for the writing.

 Here, in the land of the purported real and actual, there’s only desolation and the chance to encounter the ultimate bane of all existence.

 Fine, perhaps.  It’s the path I seem to have chosen.  When, at the momentous instance of becoming in my youth, the Trickster asked me what I wanted to be, I replied “ a warrior poet”.  But the Trickster cackled back at me: “You can only be one thing.  And you said ‘warrior’ first  And I’m allowed to make the rules.  And that’s the rule I just made for you.”

 And I didn’t protest at that moment with sufficient vociferousness.

 So I’ve been battling that bastard Trickster ever since.  For that’s what a warrior does: battle.  Yet to defeat the Trickster would be to prove him wrong.  To become that poet, too. 

 Now, being not only the damnedestly most intrepid warrior on nether-Earth, but cursed with a strange form of wilely intelligence nethertheless, I strive to regain my Trickster-dissed muse.  Here in the land of the purported real and actual.   I wish to become the bane of my own poetic desolation.

I have concluded that the XangaTeam is a bunch of religious fanatics who are attempting to prove by proxy that there is life after death.  Reincarnation, even.  And that all who donate are its cult followers.

It's a great experiment:  Watch Xanga die!  Watch it be born again!  Come with us to the Promised Land!

Well, I've decided to hang on to the end, but no longer. 

Moreover, I'd like to post the very last post on this site.  I'd like to be the last Xangan standing! (The new Xangantwoers won't count - they'll become "Xangantwoers" , ha ha.)

But  how can I assure that I have the very last post?

Even if Xanga dies on July 31st, will it be at midnight EST or at noon in Hong Kong (HKT time)?  Hell, Xanga is worldwide so shutting down on July 31st could come almost anytime.  If Xanga decides to go by Suva, Fiji time (FJT) and shut down at midnight on the 31st, that would be 8 AM on Jul 30th EST !  Oh, this is so confusing.

Xanga should have a candle-on countdown and announce the precise hour in a precise time zone that the lights will go out.  Then I can spam my own blog with an inundation of posts to capture the last microsecond of Xanga's real existence.  Never a twoer!  Damn, going out strong.

Sorry.  There are just too many other more worthwhile causes too care about in this world.

Xanga has declared that my Lifetime membership ends with Xanga.  Which for me means that Xanga ends with Xanga.

Xanga 2.0 is doomed to become nothing more than a zombie act of short duration.

And I don't like zombies.

Orchids are a wonderful relationship flower.

But they are something you should bring up early in an intimate relationship with a proposition to your partner such as this:

"Do you want to have awesome sex every day for the rest of our lives?  Orchids?"

 
Xanga is broken.  Things are not working right if they are working at all.  Search is 95% dysfunctional.  Archive downloads take way too long.  Commenting works most but not all of the time.  I have five Rec's on my last post which should put me near the top on the Most Rec'd view, but I am nowhere to be found in that list. (Actually, this is just additional evidence that Xanga blacklisted me about 5-6 years ago from ever appearing in any of their promoted views ever again.  I think I scared them.  I believe they thought any popularity thrown my way might lead to Xanga's demise.  Well, well--they can't blame me for the mess they are in.)  There are less users on Xanga now than probably late 2000 or early 2001 - very early in its infancy; but access is getting slower and slower and slobbier.  It took me over 30 seconds to upload this post on my very high speed internet connection (the connection isn't the issue, it is the Xanga servers).  I can't even upload a picture of an orchid to include in this post!  I never had grounds nor ever observed that Xanga totally sucks before.  But it does now.

If Xanga 2.0 doesn't work out, be reassured that i just purchased xangatwo.com and xanga2.com.  For $1 apiece.  For one year.  If Xanga 2.0 falters, I will use these two related domains to create a Xanga cemetery where you can upload all your condolences and remembrances about Xanga and fellow Xangans.  Details to be worked out later.  And, oh, by the way, there will be no membership fees!  But you will have to buy a Xanga plot and headstone for $48 a year.

In a May 2002 post, I conducted a curious Interview with myself and contemplated the death of Xanga...

Xanga's greatest string of poetic jewels that i can wear no more
(lost forever without archive i fear)
i now share mejane exposed ...

like rings on a tree

you'll be able
to see this year
on me

like the marks left in earth

from glaciers
rolling past

suffocating the land

and receding again

some things
leave marks

permanently

  - http://mejane.xanga.com/591077/item/

I just contributed $1 to the Xanga Relaunch Fundraiser.  Was the first to do so for $1.  Just another first to join my many-faded firsts here on Xanga.

Stats help tell the sad story.

Xanga subscribes to Quantcast  and is "Quantified"  This means that Xanga has placed Quantcast javascript on its site that provides absolutely accurate counts of all uniques visits, pageviews, etc. - and you can trend any period of time since Xanga subscribed to this service back on July 26th, 2007.

 Check out Xanga's Quantcast for yourself.

Better yet, check out your own site's Xanga Quantcast by searching here.

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Years ago, my dear, now-departed friend Rose gifted me Lifetime Xanga.  We used to joke about what "Lifetime" meant.  Did it mean our own historic "lifetimes"?  Or Xanga's "lifetime"- when Xanga ran out of money and folded?

Either way we could not escape the implication that it meant the very end of some life.

Curiously enough, Xanga has always been ambivalent about what Lifetime Xanga means.  As you can see below from my current settings, one one hand, my plan never expires (perpetuity - True Lifetime).  On the other hand, my Lifetime is set to expire in 139 months and 30 days (11 and 2/3 years) - 2025.  Okay, far enough in the future that I could always make my case to Xanga about extending it to true perpetuity then...

But now, facing financial oblivion, John has redefined "Xanga Lifetime" below (in red).  He says after 4 years of Lifetime, "your Xanga Premium has been free."  As if to say, "Since it is free, we are 'gifting' it to you now and we can, at our own discretion, start recharging you for it at any time."  And he says basically that if you have already enjoyed Xanga Lifetime for 4 years, you will soon enjoy it no more.

That's total bullshit and a breach of contract.  It's a disgrace.  If Xanga is breaking the trust that Rose invested in it to sustain my blogging as long as I or Xanga lived on, then something has to die on or before July 15th.  And I intend to keep myself alive. 

I'd rather see Xanga die and disappear altogether on July 15th than to have it linger on for awhile as a mocking reminder that a dear and heartfelt gift to me by Rose has been dishonored.

At various times over the past decade, we've sold Lifetime Premium memberships for $100. Because we normally charge $25 for a year-long Xanga Premium membership, this means that after 4 years of Xanga Premium service, your Xanga Premium has been free.
As mentioned above, the current Xanga Premium program is being shelved. But we will be offering credits in the new system for all Lifetime Premium members, at the rate of $25/year. If it's been a year since you bought a Lifetime Premium membership, we will give you a credit of $75. If it's been two years, you'll receive a credit of $50; three years = a credit of $25. If it's been more than four years, you won't receive a monetary credit but we will find another way to offer you something special as a thank you.

  - http://thexangateam.xanga.com/773587240/relaunching-xanga-a-fundraiser/

I have returned to make my peace with Xanga before its demise.

To hang out few more times, make sure I get my once prolific activity here archived and downloaded, to be gracious in fond memories.

I was asked to never publicly acknowledge it, but thank you, Rose, for gifting me Xanga Lifetime.

You gotta love this website, pettypace.org.  It has only one entry!

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-- Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

But I so disagree with Macbeth.

Hóka-héy, today is a good day to die! - Sioux leader Crazy Horse

Hold to the truth within your heart, as if to the only lamp. - Siddhartha Gautama

Besides, we all already know that the last syllable of recorded time is an ouroboros in the act of constant re-creation.

Welcoming willing women into front line combat roles is realistic for America.

However, realize that if America ever reinstates a draft for whatever reason, this implementation will justify that women are fair draft game, too.

So free.

Am I.

But I wonder about you.

Have I left you bound?

Or are you waiting for me?

It amazes me how little is now being said about the Mayan day of universal redirection at the end of this year.

Seems like everyone (media, talk, chatter) is wrapped up, at least in America, in the upcoming presidential election.

I bet that soon after the election, everyone (media, talk, chatter) returns to circular speculation about the Mayan calendar "end date", Dec. 21st, 2012,  especially, the supporters of the losers of the presidential election.  They will almost certainly feel that doomsday is at hand and, of course, if it does come about, they will blame it on the winner.

He and she who are truly free must choose, must embrace, Fate.

Only then will he and she discover that they are fated will free will.

War imposes and beauty vanishes.  Or is it the other way around?  I do not have to look to foreign lands but only into my own heart to find out the truth of this.

 How to let go of yourself?  Let go of desire.  You will find that the world is more, not less, without the need to compulse yourself.

 You cannot watch the Sun rise and the Sun set without it watching your soul rise and soul set.

 This world is haunted not by the dead, but by the living who are afraid to live, and afraid to die.  The reason it is so easy to make a zombie movie is because one doesn’t need to cast about cleverly for characters.  Almost any grab-bag sample of humanity will furnish a plethora of those who tremble in the shadows of answers to questions they are afraid to ask.

 Imagine, just, being a pre-historied but highly enlightened primitive and seeing something like that never-before-seen that  that numinesces most exquisitely in the sky, and realizing that the answer to the whole meaning of the universe is inexplicably, inextricably, yet totally improbably at hand.  And then professing belief-beyond-belief in some now forgotten language “Oh. My. Pre-Pagan. God.”   Seeing something like what , you wonder?  Yes.  Look to the sky.  And then imagine.  Once again.

"Hey you bastards, I'm still here!"

     - Papillon

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.

I find myself thinking. pondering, wondering about you on and off throughout the day in my own special, secret garden of heartfelt enchantments.  In this imaginative magical garden of mine, you shine numinously as a creature semi-divine.  But beyond that shine, there's the latent loving sensibility of a girl afar even more ablaze which so transfixes my inner gaze.   She is the one I marvel to behold and reach out toward.  She is the one subtly transforming how I perceive every new day morphing into night and back into yet another day in the spirit of an emerging hope like an odyssey underway.  O I sail, but can I arrive?  My heart says: *be watchful, stay vibrant, and thrive.*    And so I play...within this garden odyssey.

i.

the tree fell for no reason at all
it did it just said “goodbye”
and dropped over dead
with a thump as I looked on
and shuddered with dread.

ii.

a group of three lightning bugs
convened last night.
how do I know?
they lightning-ed (no thunder)
though.

iii.

(?) ever notice how tombstones’
birds sit (thereupon) perched,
tails extending over polished edge
—so innocuous, until down the sides slides the bird
shit, i’ve noticed (this repeatedly) that tombstones are
manure magnets for the foul
of fowl and I do think they do
do it intentionally.

from the Tap of All Earthly Powers
i have poured a drink of Mortal Bliss
into a Cup that Quenches All Desires.
the only question that remains is:
do i drink alone?  or would you like a sip?

not only do i not need you less , i want you ever more.

yet, where once i had you simply, by desire,

as pure immediate imagined covet of mine,

now, not you or i (of fault) have interjected this punctuating

somewhat chasm (time is the fool,

money is the proxy) measureless

-ness where, but for a  multisense of devotion, much (unless all) is lost.

and except for the faithful transmit of a promise

of the devour of a kiss to be fulfilled,

world’s are topsied

and only shells abandoned to shores are tossed.

"There's glory for you!"
   "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
   Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
   "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,' " Alice objected.
   "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
   "The question is, " said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
   "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty. "which is to be master—that's all."

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