Insight: A View Inside My Morning Head

While walking through a snow-covered parking lot on the way to work this morning, I noticed that one of my shoes had gotten untied.  The prospect of crouching down in the snow to tie it didn’t excite me, so I looked around for another option.  Nearby was a huge Ford F-500 truck, parked, with the logo “LESCO” all over it.  You know the goofy commercials: “A-s-k LESSSSCOOO!”  Well, it’s rear bumper was conveniently low and appealing.  I was alone, but if you had been nearby you would have heard the following conversation:

“A-s-k LESSSSCOOO!” 

“Hey LESCO, do you mind if I tie my fucking shoe on your rear bumper?”

(tying shoe)  “I didn’t think so.”

Truth is, I have a problem with both of my shoes always coming untied.  At least 6 times a day.  And especially when I run.  It’s very, very annoying.  Bit this hasn’t always happened to me.  Just in the last half year.  Do I need a remedial shoe-tying course, I wonder? 

I’ve begun double-knotting my shoes of late.  They still work their way loose and get undone.  No lie.  Is this a metaphor for my life?  Do I go to triple-knotting?  I’m running out of lace!  Oh my god, it IS a metaphor, isn’t it?

Weed, Doom, Gloom, and a Twinkle in the Sky

Weed...

How ironic is it that President Bush’s now ex-friend named “Wead” was the one who revealed that Georgie smoked weed?  And since conservatives like Bush maintain that smoking weed can totally screw you up, shouldn’t we demand a full accounting by Bush in order to determine if the weed actually whacked him for life?  Who knows, he may yet be prone to psychotic flashbacks as scientifically chronicled in the documentary “Reefer Madness”.

Doom... 

Speaking of bird flu crossing over to humans:

"This is a very ominous situation for the globe," CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

...if the virus develops into a form capable of spreading among humans, in the most optimistic scenario 2 million to 7 million people would die worldwide, and the toll could potentially reach 100 million.

The mortality rate is very high — about 72 percent of identified patients, Gerberding said.

"our assessment is that this is a very high threat. ... You may see the emergence of a new strain to which the human population has no immunity."

Gloom...

The proof is in the oceans:

Scientists have found the first unequivocal link between man-made greenhouse gases and a dramatic heating of the Earth's oceans.

Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said: "We've got a serious problem. The debate is no longer: 'Is there a global warming signal?' The debate now is: 'What are we going to do about it?'"

These changes are happening and they are expected to amplify.  It's acertainty that these changes will put serious trains on the ecosystems of the planet."

Paris Hilton’s cell phone was hacked over the weekend.  Holy Goddess.  Whoever would have imagined that her PIN was ‘airhead ’ and that someone would have had the gaul to crack into her phonebook stack?! .  We are not safe in our intimacies!  We are not safe as a digitalnation, I tell you!   Now I’ll have to change my (compromised) number.   Again.   Already, as a result of the hack, I’m getting hundreds of  unwelcomed  lascivious non-anonymous proposals from hot, needy, almost unsatisfiable mavens professing ear-bruning, unpublishable ‘things, thangs, thongs’.  Don’t worry—if you had my old number, I’ll get in touch somehow.   Even if it means hanging out on your doorstep like a dropped-off old-fashioned bottle of milk.  Until you take me in.

Well, well.  It appears pretty certain now that President Bush was once both a pothead and a cokehead .

So where was this substantial information when the electorate would have had a first (2000) and last (2004) chance to act upon it?  Instead of admitting things like a man and living up to what politically would have been considered 'faults', Bush understood that only remaining the Hypocrite would allow his election and re-election.  Politically astute, Hypocrite through and through.

The question arises: Now that he's 'outed' and faces no electiion, will he finally grow up and be a man and own up?  Or stay the mouse?

In my estimation, this  - AVG FREE - is a very, very good FREE antivirus.

It has earned the VB (VirusBulletin) 100% Award...

The VB 100% logo is awarded to anti-virus products that:

AND it just detected 4 trojans on my daughter's pc that Symantec Antivirus earlier missed on a full scan.  Goodbye Symantec.

Okay. This constitutes my public service announcement for the week.

But while you're at it, if you haven't already, you may want to download and run:

Microsoft's Antispyware (beta1).  It 's the only free anti-spyware that is real-time memory resident, self-updating, and runs scheduled (nightly) scans.

But since no one antispyware package catches everything, go ahead and get Ad-Aware , too.  It's free, but you'll have to run it and keep it updated manually.

Finally, get  Spyware Blaster  and keep it updated.  It's a free program that blocks adware and spyware from installing in the first place.

Now back to my mystical ruminations....

Just a followup note:

I just wrote to Jennifer Howe of Tampa Bay News 10 and invited her to view your responses in the previous video blog.

Here's my invite:

Here's a good sample of feedback from a wide variety of Xangans about
your Xanga story.

http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=notforprophet&tab=weblogs&uid=206232829

Note: A disproportionate number of my readers are adults, parents
even, and many have been blogging on Xanga for years and years. I
personally have been blogging on Xanga since Dec. 20 2000, the day
after it went public. My daughter also has a blog here.

My own opinion?  Your stories have almost certainly made Xanga more
popular.  In our society amongst youth, taboo = attraction.

But does Xanga need to be more popular?   Alexa already ranks it the
25th most popular global website:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://www.xanga.com

Dreamland Scuttled

I tried to build you a Taj Mahal, but failed.

I was a fool.

I didn’t have the blueprints.

The heartprints, the you-prints.

I managed only to move some stones around:

From here to there, there to here.

Ended up instead constructing  a makeshift Stonehenge.

And now, without you, enringed - I sit alone,

Glorying every evening the set of Sun.

To dare or not to dare.

It’s just a starting point.  An orientation.  Again.  Where you end up (or not) —the love you take (or not) —is equal to the…

(or not) forprophet.

( I dare.)

"It's innocent, but dangerous..."

   click here

Tampa Bay's News 10 unveils the evil Xanga and gets is banned

note: I edited all mention of "notforprophet" out of this video in order to protect the "dangerous".

I have a lot to say!

But not *quite* (*quite*) in the mood.

Later.

But I love you all the same.

Is there a stupider holiday than Valentine’s Day?

If you answer “Sweetest’s Day”, then you’re my kind of lover.

No. I’m not bashing love or chocolate. (or love of chocolate.)  Merely the ritualized imposterizations that commercially attempt to hijack true romance and  render it a shallow, wanton ritual.  Commercialization.  Commercialization is a perversion, right?  Maybe we should go back to the roots of this holiday to find its true meaning?

Take Cupid. 

A winged baby with a little bow and arrow bringing lovers together?  Hell no.  In Roman times, he was a god who took the form of a horny, insatiable youth going about the countryside getting all the girls and goddesses pregnant.  Raw unsugary sex, baby.  And, believe it, his arrow was no dildo.

And Valentine.  Who the hell was he?  We know he was a priest who wrote love letters of sorts.  Well, given what we today know about the kinky predilections of the priesthood, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the object of his romantic overtures wasn’t a pre-teen girl.  Or boy. 

The Romans called  this holiday Lupercus. Their priests “purifed” young naked maids by whipping them with a whip made of goat leather (called ‘februa’ – February, anyone?!) after which the girls would sneak off to make babies.  Except Augustus Caesar used the occasion of this roman holiday to totally humiliate girls and women who were childless—whipping them hard as a form of public derision. 

Oh joy.  Show your love.  Whip someone today.

This is a self-contained Dreamland concoction. 

Conceived during a 5-mile run. As runs go, a tough run. Seven downhill-uphill laps around Section 8.  Started out lamenting my unsolicited solitude. Ended up just feeling tough. Just tough.  Like a, if needed, terrorist assassin . Like a once-tortured wild animal hardened to duress.  Like the little engine who could.  And did.

I did. I sprinted at the end.

(No, wait…I didn’t really—I merely speeded up.  Okay.  Going to leave the laptop alone for a minute and finish this run the right way.  Excuse me, please. …

And an uphill sprint, at that.

Typical February day just south of the north coast of Lake Erie. Patches of snow are scattered about like blotches of rash on a baby’s ass.  Except the rash is red.  And the snow is cold.  And the ivy on the graves of the deceased still clings as it has always clung.  All in all, a very anti-valetine-ory display: no lovers walking hand-in-hand, no flowers like faces floating out of the ground, only predatory birds criss-crossing the sky scanning for tender future morsels to pluck upon.

~a Dreamland bird mausoleum~

Live like a Hawk.  Die like a Hawk.  Outside looking in, and through, the doom of death.

So you think you're aware of your little world, huh?  Master of your immediate environment.  Guru of the neighborhood given.

Okay smarty-pants and panties, answer me this...and WITHOUT LOOKING:

What are the colors of the fire hydrants in your municipality, top to bottom?

Okay, if you have to look, go ahead.  But fess up.

My hydrants are tan atop and chocolate on the bottom.  I actually had to stop my car and get out in the frigid cold air in the dark last night to confirm that.  Standing aside the hydrant, I suddenly had the urge to pee, too. hrmmm.

This may be selfish, but I hope Xanga dies before you and I do.

It's snowing sideways outside.

Is it possible that the Earth has tilted more and we haven't noticed?

This is from one year ago, today.   But I looked  the very same yesterday doing the very same thing.  Some things never change.  Though I swear that a couple of those graves have moved.

I once blogged a haiku:

"Earth sends a message:
Mind you, life is one short fuck.
Don't get stuck watching."

Guess what?
I got caught watching.

That's the bad news.

The good news is that I caught myself.

So instead of suffering life imprisonment, I'm sentencing myself to repetitive doses of daily reality.

*sniffs reality*     mmmm,   smells like a daisy.

The Joy of Fishes
by Chuang Tzu (250 B.C.)

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu
Were crossing Hao river
By the dam.

Chuang said:
"See how free
The fishes leap and dart:
That is their happiness,"

Hui replied:
"Since you are not a fish
How do you know
What makes fishes happy?"

Chuang said:
"Since you are not I
How can you possibly know
That I do not know
What makes fishes happy?"

Hui argued:
"If I, not being you,
Cannot know what you know
It follows that you
Not being a fish
Cannot know what they know."

Chuang said:
"Wait a minute!
Let us get back
To the orginal question.
What you asked me was
'How do you know
What makes fishes happy?'
From the terms of your question
You evidently know I know
What makes fishes happy.

"I know the joy of fishes
In the river
Through my own joy, as I go walking
Along the same river."

Translation by Thomas Merton The Way of Chuang Tzu, New Directions Books, 1965 

*note: Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk and mystic.  I've read quite a bit of his work-over 70 books. While studying Chinese and embracing Taosit precepts in my 20s, I understood his joy in doing the same.
 

tomorrow: ignore the pain. ignore the pain.

the physical pain. the emotional pain. will cease.

the lonliness will be no more.

going to score with the Earth.

have sex with Gaia.

sublime ALL the frustration, the inhibitions of multi-years.

yes, the details are obtuse and inexpressible
because I have yet to out figure things.

(though I have already figured them out.)

i'm healing. fucking right.

gonna be strong again.

even stronger than before.

gonna write.

gonna write good stuff.

even better than before.

*tick* *tick* *tick*

oh.

fuck xanga.

It seems that even when I’m in dire need,

Those dear to me whom I might depend upon,

Seek succor from, to whom I might turn for sure support

Are yet even needier, more dire than me.

Oh. And thus the giving goes. 

From less needy to more should the charity flow.

Ah, no one said the life, the life of a warrior

Would ever be easy.

Thus somewhere in the 30^th century they may unlikely utter:

“He died a long, long time ago.  Unaided.   Much as he lived.”

Like a 3^rd century Roman emperor, when weak, I’ve come to expect the attempt of knives thrust into my back.

 And I am weak.  Currently nearly incapacitated by extreme neck spasms that have left me unable to turn my head at all.  Strangely, I cannot recall an initiating injury.  Rather, I awoke the other day with neck pangs, thick mucousy saliva,  and a mild impairment of my sense of taste.  Though thus bothered, I proceeded with my plans for the day nonetheless.  Yet as the day progressed, my range of motion became less and less.  Unquantifiably impacting were three slips on black ice that day: one that put me down,  the other two scattered my balance in mutually opposing directions. 

Ah, the ice was stabbing me in the back.

So did the slips break me?  Or…am I suffering manifestations of some mysterious illness?

Now I’m facing a second day of not working.  And a second day of pulsating, nearly incapacitating pain.

I’m determined for this not to continue.

I shall will myself to heal.  Will myself to heal.  And be stronger than before.

Here's a "concept" post: experimenting with a new way to blog content. If I weren't in extreme pain, I would have concocted new content. As is, some posts from the past... Impressions, ideas anyone?

• ~lulling~
  
• ~novas~
  
• ~stars~
  
• ~no resolutions~
  
• ~unheld~
  
• ~shadow~


Open tab links in browser window instead.

I watched a program last night called "Jump London". It probably first aired late last year or just after the New Year. It's about a new extreme sport known in its founding language, French, as "parkour". In English, a translation of "free running" seems to be catching on. The essence of free running is mastering a discovered array of urban obstacles such as fences, barricades, walls, roofs, gaps between buildings, etc., while running/leaping/jumping but never stopping. "Never Backwards" is their motto and gracefulness of movement in performing spectacular urban aerobatics is their ideal. So the idea is to transverse the urban landscape, often by rooftops, with a constant flow of running motion and stopping for nothing - but finding a way, even in the most challenging circumstances - in the act. Someone called it the art of cat burglary without the larceny. Heh. True free runners, however, disdain that comparison and embrace the philosophy of martial arts, if not the taoistically mystical.

The website urbanfreeflow best describes the sport and its history.

A video of the sport featuring one of its founders, Frenchman David Belle, can be found here.

I haven't seen any free runners live in my parts yet. (Have you?)   I wonder (hrmm...) if I should be the first.

Yeah, I'd probably kill myself.  And, no, it wouldn't go over big for me to be vaulting vaults and scaling mausoleums in Dreamland (Lake View Cemetery) where I typically run.

Still... ­just to be able to call myself a "traceur" (free runner) and lose myself in "the flow".

If only I could truly love.

Which means I'd love what lovers love.

Of course, that means that I'd love you.

(i do( ... it seems how strange is true.

:::to love is why i'm known to you.

Well, hotdamn hell.  We're practically neighbors.

i'd rather be a bird of prey
than an angel pointing out the way.

Ready for the weekend's winterland of wonders...

There’s chapstick on my lips (I just put it there), although my lips are not chapped.  Doesn’t that make it anti-chapstick?

We say that rock salt melts ice.  Well, the ice melts the rock salt, too.  If rock salt were more of a nuisance than ice, we’d buy ice and throw it on the salt to get rid of it.

I hold the record for making the littlest snowman: three flakes stacked atop one another.

I find it much easier and safer to run on ice than walk on it.  Unless I have to make a sudden turn in direction.

Ice is not just rock-hard.  It IS a rock.  Anything that forms crystals below its melting point is a mineral and if it aggregates into a solid mass, it is a rock in my book.  “On the rocks’ is not just a figure of speech. It is the essence of literality.  Hailstones anybody?  Duh.

Snow crystals are really dirt particles dressed up in ice.  Next time you put on a pretty dress, think of a snow crystal.

There’s an old windchill and a new windchill index.  Yet their use is still mixed and you can’t always be sure which one is being referenced.  If you know your air temperature and the wind speed, you can go here to compare the two.  The old one, used by the National Weather Service until 2001 measured the impact of chilled wind on freezing water, not human bodies.  It was much ‘chillier’ than the current one (Steadman index) which measures effects of chill on the human body.  Hey, things are heating up.  Must be the greenhouse effect.

If  it’s snowing harder than you can dig yourself out of, you’re being anastrophically buried (a term from geobiology that I used as a student while writing a reviewed and published scientific paper*).  So if you look outside and feel overwhelmed by a blizzard, scream “It’s an anastrophe!”

If you go outside in a blizzard, have a death wish, and you see some fool running around a cemetery like he’s Attila the Hun storming Europe, that well could be possibly me. Scream: "You're an anastrophe."   And I will then gladly assist in burying you.

*Sediment mixing by Lampsilis radiata siliquoidea

(Mollusca) from western Lake Erie. Journal of Great

Lakes Research, 5, 105-111

I’ve a feeling a whole lot of you aren't going to like me much after I reveal a certain something about myself. In fact, some of you may end up saying: “If he cared about us even a little, he would have just kept it to himself.”

Right.

Do I care?

No, I’ve never been an actual assassin. Never took that controlled breath—then released, knowing that my steady aim was correlative with someone’s last breath.

It’s worse than that.

I walk fast.

Chances are, I walk faster, much faster than you.

Chances are, if you were walking ahead of me on a sidewalk , you’d sense me catching up from behind and passing you up. And I would likely, given the rule of street non-etiquette in a burgeoning metropolis, not even acknowledge you.

Truth is, I probably walk faster than most people can jog. If they did. Which they don’t.

Okay. There it is. Ready-set?

Go.

If it's not one thing, it's nothing or everything. 

Nothing is boring.

Everything is overwhelming. 

I'd prefer just one thing if it were the right thing. 

If only I could be left alone with the right thing...

But then, I wouldn't be alone.

ha.

This Romanesque bridge spans Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (once known as Liberty Boulevard) in Rockerfeller Park, Cleveland.

Below, a historic postcard of another bridge from the same locale.

Yesterday:

• 
  
  I ran in a Dreamland (cemetery) snowstorm.
  
  
• 
  
  finished wallpapering a room.
  
  
• 
  
  shoveled snow from 1500 sq ft. (my driveway and walks) twice.
  
  
• 
  
  took the two photos above.
  
  
• 
  
  published a security script on Chocolate that requires casual surfers to log into xanga before viewing your site.
  
  
• 
  
  drained the air from the water pipes that was rattling the plumbing when the toilet was flushed (sounded like a tornado).

Yeah, the xangagods pulled the plug on 'fuck'.  And it wasn't even pornographic.  Nor did they email me an explanation.  For not at least conversing with me, I say: f*** them.  Well, enough of that.

In memoriam...#1 Featured, 342 props, 196 comments:

fuck turned out to be too much for xanga.  Makes me wonder if I couldn't be spending the rest of my blogging energy somewhere else better, too.

update: I just sent an email to xanga on this...

I'll be brief.  'fuck' was my site.  You shut it down at noon EST on Saturday.  No explanation of shutdown was provided in the sitemessage (now there in its place), nor have i been provided the courtesy by you by email of an explanation.

A lot of my well-established readers (going back to when you sponsored the spamming Bianca) are pissed.  They see your action as censorship. Frankly, I do, too.

Would you care to provide an explanation so that I can inform my readers?

Thanks.

notforprophet

I need to doing something wicked with xanga.  Maybe I can screw with fuck ...

But what to do?  What to do?

It’s 65 F. out now.  Hey, we’re talking mid-winter in Cleveland, OH. (!)  Yesterday, it was 63 F. when I ran 5+ miles in Dreamland (cemetery).  Because the conditions were so exceptional, I’m making an exception to my own winter-no-display of-self-pic proclamation.

Just after sunset, post-run, and perfectly comfortable. (and I’m sweating, too—too much information?!)

Speaking of displays…

xTracker Advisory:

If you use the growingly popular xTracker (xanga logger), be aware that the supposed ‘private module’ display in your xanga of the ‘last visitors’ is NOT private. 

Proof of concept:

I established an xTracker for an alias named ‘chocolate’.  On the xTracker Settings page, I made the display module ‘private’ only to chocolate.  That is, if I’m logged in as chocolate, I am supposed to see my last 10 or 20 or whatever number (up to 99) of xanga visitors in a private left-sided module on my xanga, but the rest of you aren’t.  But, in actuality, anyone can see chocolate's supposedly private information here:

http://www.bloggary.com/xtracker.php?xUser=chocolate

(hint: click on chocolate first. Notice that there's no xTracker module display of 'last visitors' on the left-hand side.  Now click the link above to see your xanga-self as chocolate sees it in her private custom module when logged on to her private page)

If you have an xTracker with a private module display, plug your xTracker name in the line above and you’ll see that it, too, isn’t private, after all.

But beyond that, xTracker admits to being hacked constantly.  Besides thus being unreliable, there’s a chance that some hacker could break in and feed up malicious stuff to your xTracker module.  Think of it this way:  Your blog is Troy.  Someone has just gifted you a large private tracking horse and it is in your blogging corral.  Hrmm….

So, if you’re going to use xTracker, at least disable the xTracker Custom Module that plugs into your xanga page and log into it only directly to view your logs.

The missing cosmic link has been found.  Revealed in news stories yesterday.  “Smoking-gun” proof that the speculated non-homogenous pattern of galaxy dispersion throughout the cosmos macrocosmically replicates the microcosm of subatomic irregularities at the birth of our universe 14 billion years ago has been provided by two separate research teams.

Moreover they have determined that only 18% of all the matter in the cosmos is visible (baryonic).  The rest (82%) is the undetermined substance called dark matter (non-baryonic).  And…

 
As if this picture weren't strange enough, the 2dFGRS [study] also showed that all the mass in the universe (both luminous and dark) is outweighed 4:1 by an even more exotic component called "vacuum energy" or "dark energy". This has antigravity properties, causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. This conclusion arises when combining 2dFGRS results with data on the microwave background radiation, which is left over from the time when the baryon features were created. The origin and identity of the dark energy remains one of the deepest mysteries of modern science.
    --ScienceDaily.com

Let’s see: all matter is only 20% of “stuff” in the cosmos and what we normally have considered “the Universe” (visible ‘stuff”) is just 18% of that, or a mere 3.6% of Everything!

Funny thing is, the Dark Side isn’t appealing to us or trying to attract us, but repelling us.   It’s dissing us like a totally undesired wooer.  I’m offended.  What makes it think it’s better than us, anyway?

It's not only what you see with your eyes that matters.
But what you see that shouldn't be there.
And what you don't see that should be there.

Overlap the three like transparencies into one visionary template.
And interpret the composite from the essentialness of You.

Make adamant what you picture.  Then act upon that vision.

Not only does your reality, so demanded, depend upon your prowess.
Mine, in being part of yours, does, too. I'm feeling so needy and in total want of  a cosmic readjustment. So do what you need to do.  And I, co-immediately, pledge so too.

The world awaits the multisensoriness of  us.  And I anticipate you.

Driven by poignancy, I'm constrained to say:
I felt absolutely miserable until I ate a bag of Skittles today.

Earlier post today was 3 years old.  Was lazy this morning.  Needed to visit Dreamland and run some miles, ponder unquantifiable ineffabilities...

marshall energy. notice: Winter snowballs.

yet not focused enough to stay focused: Inadvertant sky shot while running.

who dares stalk the dead?

drive-thru past King Tut's tomb.

There are times of healing when one must center oneself so deeply within oneself so as to seem non-existent to the whole rest of humanity.

Let's give John et.al. at Xanga HQ some credit...

If you check the Xanga 'Join' page now, you'll notice it requires human verification in the form of a 'captcha'.  This will prevent programs like the holiday-spawned GNAA trollbot auto-signup from flooding Xanga with registrations of malicious intent.

By the way, ALL of the previous thousands of auto-accounts that GNAA created to comment-spam us had a non-varying password of '123456'.  heh.  And many, many of those are still 'active' with the default password...

for example:

afghanistan_needs_EXTRAMARITAL
american_belies_walker7162
ballocks_slashdot_iraqi7352
Chicago_gay_x_emo_x9522
gay_obsessed_mexican8428
horny_president_cool8667
lover_american_anal6542

Over there, a self-proclaimed GNAA operative was disgruntled because no one, including Xanga, was giving them much credit.  um...here was my response:

1. 
   

   I’m up set to see you did not give us at the GNAA any credit to our work…this is most displeasing…

   
   

   Comment by dcom — 1/5/2005 @ 10:49 am

   
   
2. 
   

   GNAA calls this “work"? heh. They are so vain. They live for vanity. If there were both an al Qaeda operative and a GNAA trash-holer hanging from branches off the edge of a cliff, it would be an amusing decision which branch to break first.

   
   

   Comment by notforprophet — 1/7/2005 @ 11:24 am

I would advise the idiots who associate with GNAA and such other worthless dung-mongering confederacies to get lives.  Except they wouldn't know what to do with them.

Do you think you can just leave any comment you want on my site?

Do you think you can just come here and say anything imaginable and have it post?

Well, you're absolutely wrong and I'm 100% sure of it.

Yes, you can say 'fuck you' or 'you totally suck' and probably get away with it. At least until I read it, delete it, and totally block your ass.

But you can't  leave any permanent comment whatsoever if you mention or leave the acronym      GNAA (or gnaa )       in the comment box.  It will seem to post, alright.  But if you refresh the page, it will have disappeared.   Like you never existed.  Because, in that case on Xanga , you don't.

Want an explanation?  What?  Do you think I'm the Answer-Man? 

Well, I wasn't going to say anything.

But now that it's 'out' and growingly topical in the geek community, why should Xangans be the last to know?

Attack of the Killer Xanga

Xanga, the Ghetto Botnet

We were annoyed by the holiday troll-botting that baited us with racist/sexist comments.  But apparently, some or all of that botting was also engineered to successfully deliver a distributed denial of service attack (DDos) to Slashdot.com over the holidays.

And apparently that was just a 'proof of concept'.  Meaning to the devious: "Attention all K-Mart hackers: this way to the Xanga door and key aisle."

There's also a 'full disclosure' available on the internet that provides a code to steal xanga cookies (passwords) and suggests that the exploits described above can be employed to harvest thousands of our passwords per hour. 

My advice (while we wait for Xanga to secure its code and processes): if you get hit up by what appears to be random hate/racist/sexist comments (even just one) and you want to check out the offending source xanga blog (a totally natural response on your part), either a)  log out of your xanga account and visit the site looking like a non-xangan, or b) subscribe to a relatively inexpensive anonymizer service like megaproxy.com and do your blogging under the cloak of stealth.

(btw, I hate writing these kinds of posts. It's too much like the work I do as an information security specialist.)

Let's make natural disasters, not war.

We name hurricanes after people, why can't we name PHAs (potentially hazardous asteroids) after figures in Revelation?  Asteroid 666. Asteroid Omega. Asteroid Antichrist.  And then we can sit back and make book on which player in the astral revelational pantheon will be the first to come through.

And back to hurricanes...what's up with giving them names like "Shirley" and "Jimmy"?  They are terribly potent and destructive phenomena that deserve concomitant Power Names from us.  Hurricane Darth.  Hurricane Trickster.  Hurricane Ripper.  However, Hurricane Rip-You-A-New-Asshole may be a little overboard.

And why are we calling this recent natural disaster just plain old "Tsunami"? As if this, 'our tsunami', is the only one worthy of the name "Tsunami"?   That's as self-centric as would be calling the Sun 'Star' and the rest of those things we never really notice anymore 'dim lights in the night sky'.  Call it the 'Fuck-It Tsunami' (after Phuket) or 'Pre-Apocalypse Tsunami I' or something.  Come on.

And we should also give consideration to a naming convention for the approaching eruption of super-volcanoes (like Yellowstone) before their actually media-required.   Maybe we can name them after famous cigarette brands?  The Marlboro-Old Faithful Blow Out?  The Hawaiian Pall Mall Blast?  Sell the naming rights to the cigarette manufacturers and retain the profits from such sales for future emergency relief efforts?

Damn it, the original attribution of names to the nameless animals gave Adam and Eve dominion over the Earth.  (Your pet has a name, doesn’t it? And you probably thus master it.)  We, as a world, are losing this dominion-grip in modern times because we've stopped doing what we do best: giving appropriate names to things! Clearly, the major challenge to us of our times is to confer Names of Power and Potency  to modern cataclysmic stuff  in order to regain the necessary upper iron-hand.  

I was 'on the job' today wallpapering a vacant house. I had my mobile webcam trained on me, more or less. It recorded me working...and drinking beer, working...and drinking beer, working...and drinking beer.  Hey, if you missed it, I'll be back tomorrow.  If you can't wait, then get your own six pack.

So while my mobile webcam is idle, some New Year scapes for your viewing diversion...

~city snowcone: crunchy snow covered with gravel topping~

~the big pond swoosh~