this longing, this passion
has confounded all direction.
I turn and turn and turn
and yet remain enwrapped endlessly
by the lusty fragrance of your mystical bloom.
and all I seek is found
in every glance returned.
so thus entranced will I accept
your sweet surrender.
and by hearts' intent
fall freely into you.
Where have all the voyeurs gone?
Answer: Hong Kong.
Ever visit Xanga HK?
http://hk.xanga.com/
It seems that nobody there ever or nearly never comments on a post. It's all about the "views". Everything ranks blatantly on views. And Xanga HK actually pimps "Top Contributors" in a way they once did long ago (1999-2000) on the U.S.A. site (www.xanga.com) but eventually abandoned because it was considered by CEO-type John to be too competitive, contentious, cutthroat and destructive of the social community. The rankings of old on the U.S.A. site were based on eProps. Who had the most eProps for a post, who had the most overall, who had the most for a week, etc. Seems in HK that "views" are the new "eProps". And the culture there perhaps suggests that it is not so polite to comment as to simply view? Commenting does not come easy to HK--perhaps commenting suggests an actual intimacy rarely established and so rarely shared? Or maybe HK is so mobile that most participation (reading) is on small portable viewing devices where it is difficult to comment? Well, whatever the reason, it does seem strange from the Xanga USA perspective where the view:comment ratio runs around 15:1 whereas in Xanga HK that ratio seems somewhere around 1000:1 .
Another thing about HK posts is that they ALL seem to start with what almost seems like a HUGE obligatory graphic at the top, but often with more graphics to follow. There seems to be a weighting of graphics and words in HK posts that is reminiscent of Ancient Chinese art where the calligraphic element was required and attended the creation but could never upstage the visual aspect itself. And so, Xanga HK seems like a living posting museum whose primary function is display visuals to be viewed (along with the poster's descriptors) rather than thoughts or feelings to be openly shared and discussed. In short, Xanga HK is picto-centric, Xanga USA idea-centric.
I like warm rock
that trembles with your weight
as I press against your bones
in the moment of our need.
I like the cemetery rain
that dissipates the crowds
yet leaves us clinging in passion,
then washes the lust off.
I like the errant fragrance
of blossoms blowing in the breeze
that then touch upon the ground
as gently as you take me on your knees.
I like the moment of impulse
that shakes the whole damn earth
when you appear for me just so—
as innocent as birth.
A tsunami of activity is underway.
Can't be seen. Not discussed.
Funding is hidden in something called a "Stimulus."
Intelligence has been reworked, missions rabidly deployed.
Right now nobody is missing George Bush more than some guy named Osama.
Will it be weeks? Or months? Moving is such a pain in the ass.
Squeeze the women and kiss the kids...
It's time to make one's peace with Allah.
How sinister the clover in this bed
that lays in wait for me.
Not to be laid upon but under
now my heart no longer thunders
in rhythmic harmonies.
How lurid is the bird
that sings strange funeral melodies
in yonder leaning tree.
With notes that float to be unheard
as dark accompaniment to my strange destiny.
How morbid, too, the buzzing just above
of this fuzzily bumbling bee.
Seeking to make honey I’ll never taste
now that I lay in waste
for all eternity.
Yet how absolutely perfect it all is.
How darkly beautiful all things be.
As the triumphant sacrament of life
endures the futile sacredness of death
to perpetuate the Great Mystery.
The Nympholept
He’d gone too far—he leapt, now leaps
where others dare not even creep—
into forests blackened by the night
—just the thought drives most sane men to fright.
And there the nymph in deep shadows waits—
the one who will decide his fate.
In the pale of the moonlight she begins the dance—
a dainty step, then a bound, and prance.
And as she whirls around this captive soul,
he stares transfixed by her unearthly glow.
Ten thousand times with as many men
has she escorted them all to the very same end.
What mortal can withstand this sight
of a nymph blazing passionate in the night,
seducing surreally the male heart
as if with magical potions and feminine arts?
Yet offering nothing more than merely this:
a captivating dance and undelivered kiss.
So through the night he’s knocked down, pulled in
by this delicate creature’s most immaculate sin.
He’s a nympholept and can no longer fight
the urge—so he’ll return tomorrow night
and for every night until the day he dies—
when the nymph by first kiss takes his dying *sigh*.
So does the nympholept mortally serve the whim
of the nymph forever hidden in the forest dim.
Perhaps. But not enough to escape the inevitable.
Hrmm... I wonder what's under there?
I suppose you'd have to be to budge this.
Even in death, Lower didn't escape his fate.
(yes, the Upper rock IS attached)
I was just about, as we tightly cuddled,
hearts beating together,
to sweetly whisper to you in assuring breaths
of my forever enduring love when –
God barged in, took me aside, and said:
“Dude. I just thought I should let you know—
all of life, the whole world, ended over 5 billion years ago.”
And He explained...
“You see, there was a supernova chain reaction
that enveloped all and banished matter right out of existence.
Now all there is is the Cosmic Glow of what had been—
It’s just a faint remembrance, this Golden Cosmic Glow.”
Cuddle (momentary) interruptus. And then I realized,
as I melted back into what had been,
that we were just a puddle of shimmer
together in that Glow,
and all that we had ever intended for one another,
all our pledges of “never ever letting go of you”
had, my love, come true.
It’s ever-amazing to be alive. To realize that I remain alive. To look at my body and marvel at how it ever got this far. To yet sit under a blazing Sun and ponder how, some day, its glorious form of existence and my soul’s own energy will be nearer to being One. To drink a beer and reflect on how I could never ever ‘drink it all’ and understand that there will be plenty of beer remaining when I’m gone. To imitate god-hood, be intimate with other god-hooders: blazon new expanses of the heart, leaps of the mind, ascendancies of the psyche, and combustions of core-knowing. See destiny as a Mobius ring and glide, glide, glide. Scream ‘fuck’ at the least expected moments—knowing that it’s not a crime. Take a can of spray-paint to the Art Museum and add to all the works of the Masters and watch those works come alive. (Wait. Backspace over that. I got carried away a bit. It’s easy to do when life is so amazing.) To wander forsaken orchards and freely pick and munch on apples and pears and peaches from off the feral trees. To treasure-probe abandoned farm houses and forgotten debilitated mansions overgrown with entrapping vines and exotic weeds. To stare at the night sky and watch the constellations realign, never perceptibly but in the eye of Time. And to truly know what it is to be high. To be high and on the verge of, if not in the embrace of, Love.
Yes. It is God-so-great to be alive.
6 minutes.
360 seconds.
That’s all we’ll ever need.
Because the Earth moves in space the equivalent of its own diameter in just 6 minutes.
Delay an Earth-bound asteroid by 6 minutes and it will be off target for sure.
Too bad the dinosaurs didn’t know that.
Dr. Dick Hoover is about to become more famous than Charlie Sheen. For real. Read on...
Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol 13,
JournalofCosmology.com March, 2011
Synopsis
Dr. Hoover has discovered evidence of microfossils similar to Cyanobacteria, in freshly fractured slices of the interior surfaces of the Alais, Ivuna, and Orgueil CI1 carbonaceous meteorites. Based on Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and other measures, Dr. Hoover has concluded they are indigenous to these meteors and are similar to trichomic cyanobacteria and other trichomic prokaryotes such as filamentous sulfur bacteria. He concludes these fossilized bacteria are not Earthly contaminants but are the fossilized remains of living organisms which lived in the parent bodies of these meteors, e.g. comets, moons, and other astral bodies. The implications are that life is everywhere, and that life on Earth may have come from other planets.
Members of the Scientific community were invited to analyze the results and to write critical commentaries or to speculate about the implications. These commentaries will be published on March 7 through March 10, 2011.
Official Statement from Dr. Rudy Schild,
Center for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian,
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Cosmology.
We believe Dr. Hoover's careful analysis provides definitive evidence of ancient microbial life on astral bodies some of which may predate the origin of Earth and this solar system.
Dr. Richard Hoover is a highly respected scientist and astrobiologist with a prestigious record of accomplishment at NASA. Given the controversial nature of his discovery, we have invited 100 experts and have issued a general invitation to over 5000 scientists from the scientific community to review the paper and to offer their critical analysis. Our intention is to publish the commentaries, both pro and con, alongside Dr. Hoover's paper. In this way, the paper will have received a thorough vetting, and all points of view can be presented. No other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough analysis, and no other scientific journal in the history of science has made such a profoundly important paper available to the scientific community, for comment, before it is published. We believe the best way to advance science, is to promote debate and discussion.
genius: that which can speak to the dead, the living, and yet to be born.
of course, if you believe in reincarnation, that makes all of us a genius!
Every once in awhile I get a comment from someone who says "I'm glad you're still here!"
Usually that's from someone who has left Xanga for 5 or 6 years, has come back, and finds me an anchor 'here' .
But 'here'--where is 'here' really?
Reminds me of a time when I was recovering in a hospital ICU and, awakening groggy from anesthesia, I begged the two nurses making smalltalk between themselves nearby to let me go back to my room. They coyly replied: "Sure, if you can tell us where you are right now." I was drugged and perplexed. I wasn't sure.... I looked around and then volunteered: "Well, I'm, I'm...here." Ha ha--I felt that I had won my freedom with that sharp, crisp pronouncement. But to my dismay, they continued the interrogation: "And where is 'here' exactly ?" I couldn't help myself. I had to tell the truth, the whole truth--the damn sodium pentathol was still an active residue in my veins. "Planet Earth," I blurted, in a cathartic rush of honesty. "That's what we thought," one spoke in a putdown hush. And they resumed chattering between themselves--and ignoring me--for the next half hour.
So I'm drinking a cup of coffee and eating a White Chunk Macadamia cookie while I wait for life to provide a better clue about what to do next.
*just finished cookie*
No, I will not submit to another.
So, instead, should I: a) read a good book, or b) get drunk?
Or read a good book about getting drunk?
Or get drunk by reading an intoxicating book?
Or plunge into drunkenness and become the fodder that good books are sometimes written about?
Or plunge into writing an intoxicating book absorbing all the world's sensations much as might a drunken Irishman who has fallen into a vat of stout?
Or just shout: 'Isn't love what it's all about?" and acquiesce into the night... ?
"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."
Blog fluffer : a blogger who habitually bloats the blog with copied quotes and anecdotes from the internet with little or any value-added, i.e., a cut-n-blogster .
it is the moment of our disconnect.
I absorb the silence at the other end
as my heart leaps back into my chest
and words yet unsaid scurry about my brain
like little children unrest with the zest
of a treasure hunt that’s never-find.
and I eat those words like a witch
might swallow a fidgeting Ginger Bread-Man.
then finally my mind is still
and I regain the will
to pluck the receiver from my ear,
yet my throbbing heart is all I hear
and the fear that is aloneness
huddles in the coolness of my shadow once again.
and I ache for the softness of her voice:
this distant, long-distance lover-friend.
Rosemary - MommaRose
*Rose is gone* more details on Nanny's post...
Rose was a remarkable person and fantastic friend. I always cherished the comments and insights she had for us and the warmth and love that she shared through her journal and in conversations. In the earlier days of Xanga, I had what one would call "a following". And not a small one. And Rose was there always standing out with her loving support and generosity. From time to time, I would threaten online to quit blogging but she wouldn't let me - literally. She gifted me Xanga for Life one birthday telling me in a phone call that that I must forever continue on blogging. "Don't you dare leave!" she practically screamed at me. And then with calm assurance and certainty proclaimed, "I'm not going to let you." I am proud to have known and shared such loving moments with our dear Rose, my dear friend forever.
The news media and internet social networking media are largely crediting the internet and social networking for the political upheavals occurring in Egypt these days. But just listen to a more sane assessment:
Lack of cell and landline phone service could prove to be a bigger obstacle to demonstration organizers than the internet disruption. Many of Egypt's impoverished citizens don't rely on the Web in their day-to-day lives anyway, said Parvez Sharma, a documentary filmmaker on Middle Eastern culture.
"These people," Sharma said of Egypt's low-income population, "are not Twittering and Facebooking and e-mailing. They've never even heard of the damned internet, most of them."
Calling and text messaging is how most Egyptians keep in touch and where most of the organizing has been done on the ground there, said Sharma, who has kept in contact with dozens of friends in Egypt during the protests.
-CNN
So while high-profiled Facebookers and Twitterers are congratulating each other and slapping each other on their backs, the social-media-uniformed masses are at the heart of the insurgency.
I actually have another point of view altogether. I believe that if those masses were sitting in their homes Twittering and Facebooking and e-mailing that they wouldn't be protesting much at all. They'd just be venting through social networking. Social networking today is just a bone that world-powers-that-be are glad that us dog-people chew on to placate our yearning for face-to-face socializing. Keep the kids, their parents, and other citizens off the streets by transforming society into a social network based upon the home computer and the streets will stay calm. For now. Until the day when social networking can be conducted through the ubiquitousness of non-held (not hand-held--one needs one's hand to fling stones and bombs!) personal social-cyber interfaces. Imagine a mass of people commingled in the streets of the capital of a major country and protesting face-to-face while remaining social-networking informed through tightly body-integrated personal social interface gizmos. That day - grows near. Of course, as long as governments keep control of the communications infrastructure and can shut it down when they feel threatened, the new technology can be neutralized. And that is why a People (as in We, the People...) must strive to grow with technology without ever becoming completely dependent upon it. Know your streets. Always be prepared to walk, to run, to huddle and whisper with your neighbors in the shadows of backyards and alleys. If you ever lose the ability for meaningful face-to-face interactivity, as a People you are in peril.
Damn. I've gone in 10 years here from phone talking to CEO-John about future tactics and strategies for Xxxxa to truly feeling I am no longer a part of any Xxxxa-thing. The significance: I have truly grown.
Anybody on Xxxxa-USA ever visti Xxxxa-HK? Something strange going on over there. Almost all Top blogs will have many 1,000s of Views but just 2-5 comments. Conclusion: HK is full of voyeurs.
I will not be happy until my smartphone has more computing power than all of Xxxxxa's servers combined and has an interactive, projectionable holographic inteface that fits like a glove. Implication: imagination always leads gadgetry.
Have proven in the last year my true professionality at what I do. What's next? The quest? Seeking a new avocation.
blogging needs a new haiku.
twitter's just a blurt.
facebook's a blur.
i'm feeling blu.
Does staring at pixels make you a pixie?
Just acquired a DVD of the movie "Groundhog's Day". Now watching it everyday. At the same time.
2) Rumi, a 16th –17th century Sufi (Persian) poet observed: “No one knows your real name until your very last breath.”
3) Schwelgien, a 21st century American (nofor)poet has further observed: “The process of your birth finds no surcease until your very last breath.”
4) Furthermore, the process of your death commenced with your very first breath.
5) There is only birth and death. The common perception that birth and death are discrete entry/exit terminals with a segment of life (lifespan) “in between” is misleading. Birth shades into death as death shades into birth. Any segregative distinctions are superfluous.
6) If one views life as something sandwiched “in between” discrete dichotomies of birth and death, then one is apt to consider as the foremost practical issues: “What do I do with my life?”, “What am I to make of myself?”, and “How am I to make a living?” In other words, one encounters the difficulty of what to do with the “intervening” segment of time. If death is seen as something inevitably awaiting us, the issue is: "What can (should) we do while we wait?"
7) If, however, one understands life as the ever-developing and interacting processes of both birth and death, then no “intervening” undefined state arises. One is always being born to some degree (a logically fuzzy birth) and is always dying to some degree (a logically fuzzy death). And naught else.
8) Hence, life is never the matter of fill-in-the-blank. Destiny is always occurring. “Life is much too busy being everything to seem anything--catastrophic included,” 20th century, e.e. cummings.
9) Death in the common perception is merely a spectator sport. Everyone watches “the event.” Even the person dying, if conscious, is sometimes inclined to observe “the event.” “I don’t want to die!” is then the lament. As if there were another choice! As if one hasn’t been dying from one’s first breath!
10) Death is truly experienced as a unique process--no fingerprint, no snowflake is as individual as each and every one of our deaths. Yet we never die alone. Which amounts to saying that no one lives your life but you, yet you never live alone. "No man is an island," 17th century, John Donne.
11) Gossip assumes the pretense of knowing someone’s real name before their last breath. In this light, gossip is seen as a form of societal hyperventilation.
12) Death always shames those who gossip. People who gossip live in secret shame because death makes gossip infamous. Who dare gossips about the dead without dread of recrimination?
13) Hence, gossip is the deathcast in the spectator sport of life. Woe on he or she who lives watching death and dies watching life--by proxy through gossip--without ever fully living and dying themselves. As Merton, 20th century mystic-monk, made out: there are “those who hide in the shadow of an answer to a question they are afraid to ask.”
14) Kerouac, a 20th century American poet/writer observed: “There is only the Golden Eternity.”
15) There is only our Golden Eternity.
So, one might ask, what is the next imminent revolutionary expression of online immediacy?
I have some notions. However, since I now believe praxis trumps speculation, I await an opportunity to predicate, not simply predict.
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.
You'd think as Xanga fades (membership, pageviews, time spent on site, etc.) that its server resources would be less strained and that performance would increase. Apparently not.
A new social networking tracking site called DownOrNot tracks performance issues on twenty popular social networking sites (Xanga among them.) Not all twenty are shown below, but the worst performing is - and that is Xanga - with only two green arrows up over the last week.
"To coincide with the launch of Social.DownorNot.com, WatchMouse monitored the availability and performance of 20 leading social networking websites during the period of August 1, 2010 to September 7, 2010. The results revealed that only Orkut recorded 100% uptime, followed closely by Flickr (99.99%), Del.icio.us (99.97%) and hi5 (99.93%). Facebook came in at 99.90% due to recent DNS issues, and Digg managed to land in the bottom five due to issues associated with their version 4 release the last week of August. More than one-third of the social networking sites monitored fell into the unacceptable category including MySpace (95.63%), followed by YouTube (95.93%), Classmates (96.98%), Digg (97.84%), StumbleUpon (97.99%), Foursquare (98.83%) and Xanga (98.88%) ."
-WatchMouse Launches Social.DownOrNot
Again, Xanga is near the bottom.
“Young companies like Foursquare which have gained popularity and success quickly are likely to have growing pains such as site overload or breakage,” continued Pors. “More established websites however, such as MySpace and YouTube that are linked to larger organizations should not have any excuses.
Xanga should not have growing pains. It should have shrinking gains.
I wonder if Xanga really deletes our photos when we "delete" them from our Photo Manager?
You know, everyone once in a while posts an embarrassing pic in a stupid moment and then wants to efface it, right?
So what's the fate of that photo? To disappear from Xanga altogether with no further reference possible?
Or to stay intact on Xanga's photo server ready to be served up to anyone who happened to copy the original link?
If you really own your own data on Xanga and Xanga really respects your privacy it will be deleted, right?
The following is a test to see if Xanga actually believes that you own your personal data. If, below, you see me hugging a tree, a photo I have deleted from my Photoblog and have expunged in every way available to me, then Xanga is hugging your photos, too, longer than it should.
Update: the pic keeps coming and going, sometimes showing, sometimes not found. So I've uploaded and deleted the same pic twice to see if maybe, just maybe, Xanga is deleting the pic on some primary server but retaining it on some clustered replicate for some period of time.
This test inspired by Half Of Social Networking Sites Keep Users' Photos After Deletion: Study
Well, I asked John, Xanga CEO-type, to comment on my last blog about spambots and he never did. But either 1) I did Xanga a public service by bringing this to the attention of someone on the XangaTeam, or 2) like I have often been, I was ahead of the curve on the spambot insight. Why ahead? Because if Xanga were my sandbox, I would have had the spammers blocked a few days after my last post rather, as is seen above, months later. Still, I have to credit John and the XangaTeam for this move. Surely, blocking these spammers will significantly decrease Xanga's traffic ratings - a stat very obvious to advertisers looking to Xanga as a prospective platform. By the way, while some of the spammers seemed to have slowed down, the most prolific, alexhormand.xanga.com is still running amok though not showing up on RecentUpdates.
In any case, even as Xanga fades, I'll look ahead for it as I can. After all, my goal is to post the very last post on Xanga before the book is closed.
Back to what's happening...
Xanga traffic stats, it appears, are converging with Habbo.com for oblivion. Habbo who? (Don't be Xangacentric, peeps on Habbo probably respond 'Xanga who?' , too.)
You can see the converging similarities here: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/xanga.com+habbo.com
Also, another good index of current popularity is not "online membership" the exaggerated claims for which can vary wildly, but online hits for news about the site. Searching Google News for stories about various soical networking sites produces the following current hit list:
XANGA (not) in the news!
Of course, this lack of news presence for Xanga could rapidly swell to a peak if it were discovered that an Al-Qaeda plot to nuke New York was uncovered on obscure Xanga Private posts or if a cult of lemonade drinkers in the Carribean were all discovered murdered/suicided and each was wearing a Xanga T-shirt. Ah, if only Xanga had actually opened that merchandise store it was exploring about 6 years ago!
Who are the most prolific bloggers on Xanga? johncamen and alexhormand: each responsible for over 10,000 posts in the last 3 1/2 months.
Who's the most prolific blogging family on Xanga? The Wire family: adamwire, allanwire, alexwire...christopherwire...juanwire...lottawire...rosiewire...vincentwire...zechrywire. I've counted at least 30 (x)wires. I'd bet there's a lot more. They are collectively responsible for at least 55,000 (bare minimum based on the most conservative estimate) Xanga posts over the last 2 months.
Who are these bloggers and their kith and kin - never sleeping, always online - who seem to always constitute at least 50% of all Recent Updates?
They are bot-driven infomercials. Yes, as with Voluven, Haemaccel, Gelofusin, all artificial blood volume expanders in the human body, Xanga is massively being infused by these artificial blog volume expanders.
To keep Xanga alive?
They publish. They never comment. The hardly ever get visited. So what's the business model?
The Wire family all subscribe to TheXangaTeam (see above). Curious. Very curious indeed. I could suggest some self-serving scenarios such as attempting to boost traffic and activity ratings ....
This is even more curious from a historical perspective because Xanga initially defined itself just so (infomercials) and had an actively blogging private development bed before going public where it published itself into seeming like an already established networking community:
05/2000 Beta Xanga (still not public) defines itself as a site for small online entrepreneurs to become affiliates (think: Amazon.com) and write/share reviews.
I've heard sometimes that some old folks and creatures and even corporations recapitulate their infancy, perhaps in an effort to "feel young" again.
But, no. Tell me it ain't so, John.
I once used to keep a running chronology of major happenings and milestones of Xanga. It was never intended to be an "official" chronology; rather it was always a chronology painted with my personal interactions with Xanga. It appears that I stopped updating at the beginning of 2006. Has anything noteworthy happened in the last 4.5 years?
A Growing Chronology of Xanga
1998 This is really an interesting "behind the scenes" perspective on the origin of Xanga:
"This was john's idea for xanga back in 1998 but I was crazy for blogs"
That's Biz Stone, known as Genius on xanga, linking from his current blog, www.bizstone.com. to junklog.com which is self-described as " ...a site for logging and rating what you've read, watched, listened to and played."
Biz Stone, aka Genius, of course, was the original "Creative Director" of Xanga who then moved on to Google's Blogger and has now moved on to Odeo, Inc. (update 2010: actually, also now co-founder of Twitter)
So what's Biz saying?
He's suggesting that Xanga as a blogging community is the result of his passion and NOT John's (current Xanga CEO) more junklog-like predilection.
If it wasn't for Biz, Xanga would be junk, too. So boasts Biz.
10/1998 Xanga starts up in a form that would be barely identifiable today.
Jewel is the first initially identifiable user. (update 2010: Jewel was actually created on 10-1-1998. I later hijacked the blog and published on it. For some reason a couple of years ago, Xanga felt a need to change Jewel's creation date to 12/20/200 - which is 'notforprophet"'s creation date. But, despite Xanga trying to rewrite history, Jewel was Xanga's first published blog!)
11/1999 Xanga Alpha (not public).
05/2000 Beta Xanga (still not public) defines itself as a site for small online entrepreneurs to become affiliates (think: Amazon.com) and write/sharereviews.
10-2000 The Xanga testbed gets hotter, but still not public.
11/05/2000 First xanga post with a link in it. (...by John, Xanga CEO-type).
11/29/2000 The soon-to-be infamous ‘bianca’ (“Bianca Broussard”) is created and developed for PR purposes; there are several ‘bloggers’ about, but most, if not all, are apparently either 1) related to the Xanga enterprise by inside invitation or 2) fictional personalities created to shake out the testbed and to create a pre-public and fictitious sense of community.
12/18-19/2000 Xanga goes bigtime public as the first GeoCities members respond to a spam email recruitment from Bianca Broussard, a fictional PR personality of Xanga.
12/20/2000 ‘notforprophet’ is born; he gets the strange intuition that not everyone in the neighborhood is for real.
12/26/2000 I identify the first real “face” behind the Xanga enterprise.
12/30/2000 I identify more real “faces” behind Xanga. Membership climbs approx. 1,595 to 1,734 from 12/28 to 12/29 --which amounts to a one day increase of 9%.
3/7/2001 Blogrings are introduced.
3/10/2001 Angelfire spam recruitment underway (Bianca returns after 1-2 month hiatus).
4/28/2001 Bianca is deactivated!
5/2001 Many structural changes to popularity and ranking metrics; Premium ($$) appears.
5/8/2001 savvyweaklink host's Xanga's Weakest Link as a flaming spoof of the new wave of reality TV (Survivor) as well as "The Weakest Link." The challenge? "Who is allergic to intelligence? Whose typing is quicker than their mind? Who is running on empty?"
10/22/2001 "nfp, i think we have close to 40k members now... that alphabetical list started to be too much of a strain on our servers."
10/30/2001 Genius, aka Biz Stone, the former Creative Director (and father of Bianca) leaves Xanga. He eventually goes on to become part of the Blogger team at Google and now most recently resides at Odeo, Inc. (2010 update: co-founder Twitter).
Winter 2002 “Xangalympics” is aggressively marketed by Xanga to its members, with the winner to get Lifetime membership, and the winning ‘Team’ to get other prizes. Winners are never announced.
1/25/2002 James, the daily fix for a strong following of Xangans, "leaves" Xanga (returns 2 weeks later).
2/5/2002 The first mobile blog webcam in the world is featured on Xanga. The WebCamMan streams live video into his post while driving down the highway and toreibjo, a blogger from Norway, comments live: "I can see the road from the inside of a car. You the movie! This is way way cool!"
2/6/2002 urnightmare (now banned) becomes the 1st Grand Flame, the first grand disrupter of Xangatown. After he moved into the hood, you could never totally trust your neighbor again.
3/5/2002 the great Xanga coder, the one and only seanmeister (since defunct, now just sean) discerns a code that allows the insertion of graphical comments (i.e., pictures, avatars, animated gifs, backgrounds, etc. along with words - see associated link for examples of what it looked like) on posts. Thus begins the short-lived Komment Revolution. Xanga would later "tighten up" the code to prevent such comments.
6/22/2002 Membership is estimated at 100,000 bloggers and traffic at a million hits a day.
7/2002 Xanga Store announced (never launches, now defunct).
Xanga Personals (date and mate-matching) started (defunct as of 2/26/2004).
7/29/2002 The Asian community on Xanga (now 95% of all bloggers) coalesces and ascends to the top of Featured Content.
8/6/2002 The first Xanga Blogchat is hosted on this blog. It finally brings assorted Xangans together for the first group interactive chat.
8/20/2002 Blocked Users feature is introduded for Premium users. CEO John toys with advertising Xanga's 10 Most Wanted (most often blocked) list, but the list never surfaces. Free Blocking (for non-Premium users) kicks in on 10/17/2002.
9/7/2002 Featured Content is divided into Premium and Classic views with Premium as the default. John believes this will guarantee "No more social propping - just stories, musings, pictures, fiction..." Ha!
10/15/2002 "International Xanga Meetup Day" is sniffed out and scooped by nfp before an official Xanga announcement is made. Monsur concedes that the scoop forces their hand and so Xanga Meetups finally birth
1/10/2003 nfp subscribes Pres. George Bush to his blog. Xanga's CEO John passes the White House's response back to nfp.
8/25/2003 Xanga introduces Protected Postings. Condom use will never be the same again.
12/20/2003 In relative obscurity, this unfinished chronology of Xanga first gets devised.
3/12/2004 Xanga gets a Wickipedia entry. Current one here.
10/2004 BlackCat69 goes Protected. Henceforth, all the sex he is having with underage xangan females (that he has used his xanga to lure) will be safe. Somewhat later, blackcat69 morphs into Gucci_Man. The world population of cats is relieved by the disassociation.
10/10/2004 Xanga Metros launched. Xangans in small towns feel even more distanced (j. kiddin 
)
10/22/2004 Featured Content gets filtered to bar Adult Content.
Various, 2005 Xanga bloggers make the news (as Xanga bloggers)...
In March 2005, 2 students at Grand Ledge High School used Xanga (and Myspace) to post entries which included death threats against a teacher. In April 2005, the Fresno Bee reported that students at Buchanan High School in Clovis, California were using Xanga to insult and threaten their classmates. Also, cyber-bullying at classmates and family members was reported.
On May 17, 2005, police used a murder victim's last Xanga entry to identify his and his sister's killer.
In September 2005, Our Lady Of Peace Middle School in Columbus, OH expelled a student for insulting both teachers and students on her Xanga.
Recently on December 8, 2005, Students of Taft High School of Chicago, IL have been suspended for posting threats about teachers and students.
In early December 2005, police in Dublin, OH arrested a 14 year old boy for posting death threats on his Xanga site, threatening to kill classmates and teachers.
1/14/2005 fuck gets totally Featured ! then fuck gets immediately banned (fucked?). (followup: fuck knew the xangods and has since phoenixed once again.)
7/29/2005 "the dancopalypse" is upon us. (See post below)
8/23/2005 Xanga finally has a Search that works. But it only has a 2 month memory.
12/12/2005 Xanga hosts an estimated 21 million blogs.
12/20/2005 'notforprophet', upon his 5th xangaversery, reckons that he's 120 cyber-years old. (based upon observation that 3 years is the normal span for a PC under warranty, of support for "supported" software versions, and for the average serious blogger to hang on to dear bloglife. And yes, lcsaph, was there with him at the start - and it was not a coincidence.
12/31/2005 Say goodbye to Lifetime Premium. It's shelved as Xanga introduces Premium Plus.
1/18/2006 "the dancopalypse" starts a rumor? No, it must be true!
There is a xanga virus going around and I wanted information on what to do about it.
Back at the beginning of the year 2000, this was a very vibrant, exciting, self-discovering community. I remember a time then when you could actually comment on everybody who wrote a post on a given day. And back then peeps wondered what to do with this new expressive media. Was anything possible? Was everything possible? Writers emerged, poets emerged, silliness ran amok. There were many "firsts" and I was the author of some of them. "Firts" were always fun for me in the sense that I was bringing new functionality never before experienced on Xanga (or, perhaps, even the entire blogosphere). The first group blogchat was sponsored on my site. Even John (CEO) thought it was great. And is was. A little later, I sponsored a mobile webcam that fed directly into my blog. I remember bloggers commenting "turn left" "turn right" as they followed my live webcam blog driving around the city. So there was lots of innovative fun in the early formative days of Xanga.
Now Xanga seems more like a retirement community. And I don't mean so with regards to the age of the participants, probably much, much younger now than at Xanga's startup when a teenager was a rarity! Nor do I mean so with regards to post content which appears to still retain much variability. Rather, with the exception of the featured top blogs, interactivity has grown senile. Xanga's a much more solitary place now if your not featured than it was any time before. It's a good place for hermits who like occasional interaction now and then. But it ain't where the party is at anymore.
Hong Kong Xanga is still an exception to the above trending. It appears things are still hopping there. "Ni hau ma?" "Hua bu hua! Ni ne?
Here is something curious: In Dec. 2005, Xanga Search displayed 1.2 million hits for the word "fuck" (as recorded on fuck.xanga.com) . Today, it displays only 375,000 hits for "fuck". So either Xangans have quit fucking around and deleted many of their old fuck posts, or the current search is less than exhaustive, or the old search was triple or more extra counting. I don't think that post-2005 post-deletes and site-shutdowns could account for the 825,000 instances of these missing fucks. And that would not be even counting all the fucks blog-uttered since then - now 5 years later. So either the current search is less than exhaustive or the old search was hyper-repetitive. Perhaps the current search is only indexing a subset of some determination of "active membership". I shall test this hypothesis and present the results!
*goes away and digs forensically into Xanga*
*returns*
I've tested and here are the results:
Xanga site search is all fucked up. I have found that not all sites are indexed. Both some early 2000 sites and some other sites publishing at late as 2007 are not indexed, perhaps others even later than that. For instance, the word "Jelaluddin" (as in Jelaluddin Rumi) is mentioned on God's site (god.xanga.com) on 8-25-2007. So is "Jung" (as in C.G. Jung) But does Xanga Search find it? Fuck no. Xanga is totally dissing God, Rumi and Jung by keeping them unexhaustively searchless. I mean, wtf?!
The Nympholept
He’d gone too far—he leapt, now leaps
where others dare not even creep—
into forests blackened by the night
—just the thought drives most sane men to fright.
And there the nymph in deep shadows waits—
the one who will decide his fate.
In the pale of the moonlight she begins the dance—
a dainty step, then a bound, and prance.
And as she whirls around this captive soul,
he stares transfixed by her unearthly glow.
Ten thousand times with as many men
has she escorted them all to the very same end.
What mortal can withstand this sight
of a nymph blazing passionate in the night,
seducing surreally the male heart
as if with magical potions and feminine arts?
Yet offering nothing more than merely this:
a captivating dance and undelivered kiss.
So through the night he’s knocked down, pulled in
by this delicate creature’s most immaculate sin.
He’s a nympholept and can no longer fight
the urge—so he’ll return again tomorrow night
and for every night until the day he dies—
when the nymph with a first kiss takes his dying sigh.
So does the nympholept mortally serve the whim
of the nymph forever hidden in the forest dim.
LeBron, all by himself: 28 million Google hits
asshole LeBron (intrinisically associated): 9 million Google hits
Conclusion: Practically one-third of all hits for LeBron include the word "asshole" in the same article.
Compare with "Mel Gibson", 20,900,000 Google hits; and asshole "Mel Gibson", Google 123,000 hits
and
Compare with Hitler, 42,700,000 Google hits; and asshole Hitler, 20,700,000 Google hits
haha, Hitler kicks LeBron's ass! (hole)
It feels new here again. As if no one is watching or waiting for me to write. As if there are no expectations to live up to some social networking hype. Maybe it's because so many of those who once were here have moved beyond. Maybe it's because Xanga has dwindled in its old age and seems infantile once again as sometimes happens to some old folks riding in the caboose of life. It's good. It's tight.
( ) am in a great mood. ( ) feel that ( ) will do something of great significance today.
The results are in. ( ) recently took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment and ( ) am an ENTP-type personality. ( ) think that stands for Entropy.
( ) miss those old days of blogging when there was hardly a teenager who even knew what "blogging" meant.
( ) grandson is a joy - ( ) am blessed.
( ) still save the world every night in ( ) dreams. What the hell is up with that?
be good, be lucky, or just be. But stay. And (be) .
It stalks me so finely
This adventure benignly
Transcribed to my impulse aggression.
In the shadow it waits…
Step forth? Hesitate?
I am vexed by its dissenting dimensions.
Is it romance? No way…
Though it taunts my whole day
With an erotically-infused glimpse of passion.
Yet soon I shall take it
Head on and thus make it
The true whore of enduring non-illusion.
Here's beginning my 10th year blogging. On Xanga since 12/20/2000. Laura brought me here. Laura's gone - God knows where. Does anyone remember lcsaph? I'll bet you Michel does! I've been gone, too: Functionally Unparticipative. Yeah, FU. No, not you, me. Well, so much for a year's of so interlude of extracoursal cyber-interactivity.
Once upon the time outlined above, nothing was more important to me than being an ever-involuting part of this online family. For me, it was once life's expression of the possibility for true love itself. Some of us did fall in love. We did share some intimate and memorable moments, didn't we? But I have no such expectations anymore. Let samsara be samsara.
Always remember: it's better to remain sexy than experiment in psychosis - C.G.Jung, notwisthstanding.
Hey. Just a word. There's sunshine streaming in through a window in my room. Expressive writing for me has become as strange as purple ghosts. I gasped recently at the sight, in person, of the Enola Gay. My daughter is expecting her first child in March. My best friend is a puppy named Rusty. I recently became a "Certified Application Security Specialist" ha ha. The ancient oceans were green, you know; blue is the color of life revealed. Looks like a trip to Central America in January. If my happiness were contagious, would you get sick?
"http://xanga.com was running Microsoft-IIS on Linux when last queried at 11-Nov-2009" - netcraft.com. Linux!!
We humans, are the most marvelous life form that the universe has yet created. (universe = God, if you insist, or if She/He insists that you so comply).
Go us!
I do so miss you all.
...to better days.
I am free but not released. 21st century world lament. Is there anyone out there enjoying an adventure who is not a spy?
I've been drinking pornographic beer lately. Molson XXX. Two more X's than sex. But still no match to crack for a crack whore.
I'm not sure whether our culture is now more self-specious or more self-vacuous. Not that it is not necessarily really not much of neither. Culture actually presents to me as linearly-marketed subsets of seductive absorption into self-concealing obfuscations. We are products of our products. We are programs watching programs.
I helped an elderly lady catch her little runaway ankle-level dog this morning. I don't care if the dog hates me for life. At least it won't be free to run around and bite me.
Than you all for your heartfelt comments on my last post.
My childhood hero, my brother Art, died today.
Special Forces sergeant during the Vietnam War, walk-on to the Ohio State Football team- met Woody Hayes who thought having an ex-Green Beret on the team was a very good thing! Left college to become a police officer and helped establish the first SWAT Team in Cleveland - back when SWAT was like super-cool. Studied law and completed law school just to prove to himself that he could, then retired from the police and taught criminal and private investigation in a college to mostly poor but aspiring underprivileged students. Had a lifelong dream to build a log cabin and did so on atop a wooded hill in mid-Ohio with his own hands. He was a formidable warrior, a master craftsman, a great brother, and I will miss him.
A tsunami of activity is underway.
Can't be seen. Not discussed.
Funding is hidden in something called a "Stimulus."
Intelligence has been reworked, missions rabidly deployed.
Right now nobody is missing George Bush more than some guy named Osama.
Will it be weeks? Or months? Moving is such a pain in the ass.
Squeeze the women and kiss the kids...
It's time to make one's peace with Allah.
Now, it seems, I only visit Xanga on the holidays: Groundhog's Day last time and Valentine's Day now. So what's the next holiday?...President's Day on Monday. Damn, I'm practically on a roll...
I actually was on a roll last Saturday. My SUV rolled over and over and down into an Ohio country ditch and proclaimed 4 wheels to the sky while inside gas started to drip on me and blood dripped from me. Coming to a stop upside-down, I took one moment to celebrate my core-life, still intact, and then righted myself and climbed up out of the broken passenger window and into open air. Out and looking back in through the broken window, I realized the vehicle was still running with my keys in the ignition. So I climbed back in to terminate the internal (and possible source of external) combustion, retrieved my keys, and climbed out again. Out for a second time, I realized that yet another set of keys (to the country log cabin) - that I had deposited in a cup tray - had been thrown somewhere inside about. So I climbed in again, searched, and found them. And again climbed back out. At that point, nearly completely battered, exhausted, and confused, I walked away....
One week later, no, I'm NOT okay -- I'm still dripping blood onto the keyboard. Just kidding. I'm not that sloppy. I'm dripping neatly into collector basins for resale to vampires.
I've already settled with the insurance company. Now it's time to find a new ride. And heal.
A few simple Groundhog questions:
Why does light bring continued darkness?
And darkness, supposed light?
On February 2nd we find the coincidence of many holidays: the Christian Candlemas (Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary) Day, the modern Groundhog's Day, the pagan celebrations of rebirth (Imbolc and Oimelc), and St Brigit's Day (Ireland). And they're all related! There's a re-aligned tie-in, too, of the Roman holiday of Lupercalia (modern St. Valentine's Day) since the Feast of Purification and Groundhog' Day were celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox calendar and some Ozark folks on Feb. 14th , and many pagans consider the current Candlemas Day (Feb. 2), the Feast of Lights, to be a pagan version of St. Valentine's Day anyways. So confusing! (For a stunning analysis of the all these intricate holiday tie-ins, check out Candlemas: The Light Returns)
But back to riddle at hand....
According to an old English song:
If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Go Winter, and come not again.
According to an old Scotch couplet:
If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be twa (two) winters in the year.
Why so? Because Candlemas day is a cross-quarter day in the pagan calendar, six weeks between the solstices and equinoxes. And according to pagan beliefs, the cross-quarter days can be used as 'inverse' weather predictors, whereas the normal quarter-days are used as 'direct' weather predictors.
So face it: Punxsutawney Phil is a pagan (naughty groundhog pagan!) utilizing the presence (or absence) of sunshine to create a detectable shadow (or not) from which he inversely makes a prediction! No sunshine, (no shadow), winter's at an end! But sunshine (and shadow), six weeks more does dismality send!
1) I don't like Obama drawing constant comparisons between himself and Lincoln...for one consumate reason: Please, Barack, do not attend the theatre while you're in office.
2) It was so, so, so sub-zero the other day that I felt I couldn't pass up the opportunity while outside to pee on a tree just to see what, under the circumstances, it would feel like. It was exhilirating! And, oh by the way, last one to pee owns the tree.
3) About 50% of my current online time is spent heightening my mastery of cyber-forensics. I now often view the Internet more as a battlefront than a communications medium. Why? It's fun and exciting. And I get paid for it.
There's phone line that travels through my mind and doesn't terminate in a handset.
A party-line it is. Tap in an you're psychic. Tap out and you can't be more isolated.
There were a lot of chicks on the party-line last night and their voices were all or semi-nude.
Howling chicks, screaming hot chicks - yet none with my number. 'Cause it's a party line. And I'm just an aural voyeur.
It's my birthday. And I'll die if I want to.
Or is that cry?
Two nights ago, I dreamed that I was battling creatures and slayed them with darts. They were all female and stalking outside my window. hmmm.
Last night, I dreamed that I was about to be locked in a cemetery (Dreamland), but jogged out just before the gates were closed then hopped on somebody else's nearby parked chrome-plated hog and drank a beer. cool.
I'm having this strange psychic intuition that the world and national economy are going to return to prosperity a lot, lot sooner than almost all (dismal science) economic pundits are forecasting. verry cool.
Sex. You can't deny it. But the beautiful mind (that's a magma-erupting volcano of endearing imaginations) is ssex(xxx)ier than any other body part that evolution has yet to lay pipe to.
I'm currently under a spell where things are happening. My rational mind is cautiously urging a spell-check. But my sensous soul caws intrepidly and crafts the which.
Go Cavs!
...I was too awash with dadaist creativity to wish a simple "Happy New Year."
It's been an inexpressibly beautiful and inexpressibly painful year. So much so inexpressible. Hence, my distance and removal from blogging. This was the year that I finally came to forget about Xanga for large spans of time. Had to. Life just didn't permit. But those of you whom I came to know through Xanga as friends I will never forget. Now on to the New Year - may you all, as your needs require, press more profoundly into this, our mystery, life transcending, as the spirit-warriors you were born to become. But keep it happy. 
Was just going to say Merry Xmas but realized that wouldn't have been in line with all the Featured Weblogs on Xanga's frontpage that ever seem to ooze Sex, Rape, Love, Trysts, Erotica, etc. Xanga is becoming quite the sex rag, isn't it? And I wish to say nothing thereby dissonant. So, in the Xanga sexspirit, an esoteric poetbit I leave you with:
having been the total idiot once and finally
having been
now i toss sex and intimacy to the wind
and fly my kite.
For all the rest of you for whom the shack-up hormones aren't predominantly life-directing right now,
Merry Christmas
-nfp
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