You want to scan Xanga for the latest, funniest blogs.  Nope.  It's not going to happen.  But here at least is a picture of a cat.

So there's that.  I am going to list all the September blogs I know about (the ones that say something besides "hello").  If I left anything out, you can add it in a comment.  The links each open a new window.

godfatherofgreenbay

adamswomanback

whyzat

erika-steele

crystalinne

reginasikora

murisopsis

fauquet

iamsurrounded

mlbncsga

elusivewords

Peace out.

I am paying for this platform, so it better have lots of bells and whistles.

I managed to post an image (it is an ophthalmologist). And I managed to set the fonts using CSS. Cool, hah?

Peace Out.

Really, it all goes back to Odysseus.  Everything goes back to Odysseus.  The nymph Calypso enchanted him with her singing and held him hostage on her island as a sex slave for seven years.  Finally at the request of Athena, Zeus ordered Calypso to release him. She did so and then attempted suicide, but being immortal, she was unable to end her life.

It is a very nice story, and it has nothing to do with John Denver's cheesy lyrics.

Aye, Calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well

Denver did not mention sex slaves or the straits of Bosphorus or Athena.  What is that?  As a matter of fact, nothing has to do with Denver's cheesy lyrics.  His musical style is not even West Indian Calypso.

The Odyssey, Homer assures us, is a series of events following the Trojan War.  The fragment shows how Odysseus fits into the historical timeline.

My point?  I found an amazing chart in slate.com named The Entire History of the World—Really, All of It—Distilled Into a Single Gorgeous Chart

My point is you have to see this friggen chart.

Did you ever have the feeling someone was following you?  I felt it when I was hiking in a state park ten years ago.  I quickened my pace and became more alert, but my stalker never materialized.  A day later, while packing my car, I had the same feeling.  Suddenly, a primitive, savage figure lurched out of the depths of the woods.

It was Xanga.

It stared at me and uttered something incomprehensible.  It was a near-human creature who walked on all fours.  It fixed its attention on the box of pot stickers I was carrying.  Without hesitation, I threw it the pot stickers, jumped into the car, and drove away.  Looking in the rear-view mirror, I saw the creature wave at me longingly.

What the hell.  I puzzled about it on the drive home.  What could this monster be?  Its filthy face had the features -- nose, mouth, teeth, ears -- of an actual human being.  It had human hands and feet.  Could it be feral?  I remembered the stories of wolf-raised babies and monkey children who never learned to be human.

Maybe he was only asking for help, I imagined.  The idea ate at me.  It gnawed at me, and against all good judgment, I turned the car around and headed towards . . . the biggest mistake of my life.

Soon he learned to read.  Yes, amazingly, I took him home, fed him lots of pot stickers, and even introduced him to pornography!  He eagerly taught himself to search the internet, how to read and write, and how to call everyone an "idiot."  You can imagine how proud I was.

In no time, he became a goddamn social network.  There was nothing I could do.  And he didn't need me any more.  He didn't even care.

That's when I started drinking.  I drink to ease the pain of not being featured and of being ignored by Xanga.  I do not want to live like this any longer.  I have threatened to close down my blog if Xanga didn’t feature my next article, and to no effect.  I can only assume that he wants me out of there.

Lately I have been having dreams where a figure is standing over my bed eating pot stickers and I know that this figure is Xanga and that he is here to extinguish my life.  He is an angry creature and will not rest until I am dead.  I worry that rest of my life will be spent looking over my shoulder, waiting for him to appear and deliver the blow that will end everything for me.

Thanks a lot, Xanga. 

I just answered this Featured Question; you can answer it too!

The End of the Road (1958) is John Barth's second novel.  Its style is dry realism, in contrast to his better-known metafictional or fabulist works, such as The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, and Chimera.

The book has been called an "ideological farce."  Its protagonist, Jacob Horner, suffers from a nihilistic paralysis, which is the inability to choose a course of action from the available possibilities.  Horner's nameless Doctor gives him a schedule of unorthodox therapies.

"Motion! Motion!" the Doctor would say, almost exalted. "You must be always conscious of motion!"

There were special diets and, for many patients, special drugs. I learned of Nutritional Therapy, Medicinal Therapy, Surgical Therapy, Dynamic Therapy, Informational Therapy, Conversational Therapy, Sexual Therapy, Devotional Therapy, Occupational and Preoccupational Therapy, Virtue and Vice Therapy, Theotherapy and Atheotherapy -- and, later, Mythotherapy, Philosophical Therapy, Scriptotherapy, and many, many other therapies practiced in various combinations and sequences by the patients. Everything, to the Doctor, is either therapeutic, anti-therapeutic, or irrelevant. He is a kind of super-pragmatist.

At the end of my last session -- it had been decided that I was to return to Baltimore experimentally, to see whether and how soon my immobility might recur -- the Doctor gave me some parting instructions.

"It would not be well in your particular case to believe in God," he said, "Religion will only make you despondent. But until we work out something for you it will be useful to subscribe to some philosophy. Why don't you read Sartre and become an existentialist? It will keep you moving until we find something more suitable for you. Study the World Almanac: it is to be your breviary for a while. Take a day job, preferably factory work, but not so simple that you are able to think coherently while working. Something involving sequential operations would be nice. Go out in the evenings; play cards with people. I don't recommend buying a television set just yet. If you read anything outside the Almanac, read nothing but plays -- no novels or non-fiction. Exercise frequently. Take long walks, but always to a previously determined destination, and when you get there, walk right home again, briskly. And move out of your present quarters; the association is unhealthy for you. Don't get married or have love affairs yet: if you aren't courageous enough to hire prostitutes, then take up masturbation temporarily. Above all, act impulsively: don't let yourself get stuck between alternatives, or you're lost. You're not that strong. If the alternatives are side by side, choose the one on the left; if they're consecutive in time, choose the earlier. If neither of these applies, choose the alternative whose name begins with the earlier letter of the alphabet. These are the principles of Sinistrality, Antecedence, and Alphabetical Priority -- there are others, and they're arbitrary, but useful. Good-by."

In summary, this book is strange enough to keep you entertained.  There are a number of outdated and possibly offensive attitudes on race and sex, but you'll stay with this book just to find an answer to its central question, namely . . . what the fuck?

You can download The End of the Road e-book HERE for free.

Samantha Kuntz of West Moosejaw, MT, had a major cash flow problem.  This is a true horseshit story.  She lost her barrista job when the cafe made layoffs, her savings were gone, and her car's transmission had failed.  Times were hard.  Finally, like so many of her friends, she was forced to work as a taxi dancer.

What the hell, a taxi dancer?  Samantha was not altogether sure what a taxi dancer was supposed to do.  She had seen neighborhood kids dancing on the hood of a taxicab.  Was that it?  But how would they get paid?

It was no good.  She realized she would have to start by acquiring her own taxi.

She could offer private dance performances inside just like a stripper.  There ought to be lots of money in that . . . 

. . . especially if she wore a provocative taxi uniform. 

It was no good.  She could not afford a taxi.  She couldn't even afford to get her own car repaired.  Again and again she found herself hailing a cab instead. 

Samantha was dancing for taxis.  Bingo!  It was the actual dance of her quest. 

So she applied to work as a doorperson at the hotel. 

It was no good.  The hotel in West Moosejaw did not have a doorperson (not even a doorman). 

She stood in the ballroom and waited.

Background:
Why would a guy agree to this?  One reason was that paying for dances eliminated the risk of rejection.  It didn't matter if the man was shy, homely, too short, too tall, too bald, or didn't speak English.  If he bought a ticket, he got to dance.  Other customers liked the prospect of a pleasant evening's entertainment with no strings attached.  A man could simply walk away at the end of the night, with none of the entanglements or obligations of actual dating.  For still others, the taxi-dance hall was a social outlet.  He might be a recent immigrant, for example, with few opportunities to meet and socialize with single women.  Or he might be non-white, and therefore unwelcome in the public ballrooms.  He might have no friends or family, or simply be in a town on a business trip.  For the price of a few tickets, a man in any of these situations could dance and talk with a pretty girl, without the burden and effort of meeting new people and forming friendships.

Why would a young woman work in a place like this?  First and foremost: the money.  For girls with no skills, taxi dancing offered substantially more money than "respectable" jobs.  Not to mention that dancing in evening gowns and high heels must have seemed far more appealing than washing other people's laundry or packing meat.  For the girls who would become taxi dancers, money and the prospect of a good time outweighed the problem of respectability.

- Taxi Dancers by Christine Fletcher

It was no good.  Samantha could not hope to make a living on ten cents a dance.  So she became a hooker.

The End

Nothing daunted we will sing the anthem once again

O Xanga! Our home and native land,
Our theologian motherflocker Dan,
Something something forty-eight bucks,
Something something Xanga sucks,
Social medium gloriously unfree,
La la la stick a fork in me!

She writes me these elegant erotic pieces.  It occurred to me that nobody else has read them.  Maybe it's time to share.

I am wearing a long flowing cotton dress.  If I stand in front of the window the light passes through the thin fabric of my dress and you can see the outlines of my legs.  You begin to wonder what color panties I am wearing (if any at all).  You wonder how firm and strong my legs might be.  What are my calves like.  You look at my strappy sandals and wonder how tickly my soles might be if I was hogtied in your bedroom.  You are naughty.

I rinse out your hair and begin to clip away.  I mention that it has been a bad day for me.  My car ran out of gas on the way in this morning, so I had to walk.  The a/c broke in the salon.  You make me an offer to give me a lift home.  I quickly accept.

The scissors keep snipping away.  Some country western music plays softly in the background....  snipping away at your shirt as you are strapped down to the chair.  snip snip .. I make you a counter offer, for giving me a ride home I will shave your face to get rid of the 5 o'clock shadow.  You say, "Sure ma'am."  snip snip ..

I fill the basin with warm water and put a hot steam towel to your face.  As I do so you see that one strap of my dress slips off my shoulder.  I remove the raging hot towel after a few minutes. You look up and see my face.  A few beads of sweat on my brow.  I begin to apply shave cream on your face.  Then you see me get out a straight edge razor and ran it alone the wide leather strop.  thick leather cuffs.  You are a bit nervous, but do not worry I assure you.  I have lots of experience with sharp razors and have never nicked any man.  Or girl.

You hear and feel the sharp razor's edge scrape along your skin.  I wash the razor out in the basin of water.  Some of the water splashes onto the top of my dress.  The fabric becomes wet and clings to my bosom.  As I lean in closer to your face my nipples come very close.  a certain stirring begins to arise in your pants.  You are covered with the white cape so I can't see what is going on down there; but I do see a man in pleasure from the shaving.  Your eyes travel down to seek out my cleavage.  And I am not wearing a bra.  My nipples are up and out, loud and proud.  You are trying to keep your hands on the arms of the chair.  Because if you dare to caress yourself you risk getting excited and agitated.  restrained erection

You slowly slip one hand into your pocket, searching for loose change so to speak.  petting the cute puppy.

Your cock has swollen up, the blood is beginning to surge through the veins.  turgid.  Just as it does when you wake in the mornings when your girlfriend kisses your morning boner and it quits its deep slumber to greet the day and be molested by her sucking.

getting ready for bed now wearing light blue dress shirt button down collar.  I do not think teddybear can undo all these buttons.  shall I continue this story?

~C~

for using the crappy handle we_deny_everything, which sounds like a PR executive trying to tap dance his way out of a criminal negligence lawsuit . . . or maybe like a colonel whose men have been accused of sodomizing manatees . . . or, I don't know, maybe an ex-congressman who engaged in explicit sex talks on the internet two years after being caught publishing photos of his own weiner . . .

I will never use this annoying handle again.  But I encourage Anthony Weiner to claim it.  It may be his only chance.

Peace Out.

I don't know about you, but I certainly do.  For me, life would be unbearably dull without them.  By the way, if you were looking for a thoughtful analysis of American morals and perceptions, you won't find it here.  My posture is pretty much "holy crap, look at that."

Weiner Unleashes a Weiner
The media has followed ex-congressman Anthony Weiner for weeks, and it doesn't stop.  He engaged in explicit sex talks on the internet.  He is so endearingly douchey!  Just when you thought you he had his career under control, he whips out the dolphin again!  Yes, the dolphin.  And all under the creepy pseudonym Carlos Danger!

The Argentine Firecracker
Once upon a time there was a stripper from Argentina named Fanne Foxe.  Wilbur Mills was chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.  On November 30, 1974, Mills, seemingly drunk, was accompanied by Fanne Foxe's husband onstage at The Pilgrim Theatre in Boston, a burlesque house where Foxe was performing.  Mills later held a press conference in Foxe's dressing room.  The escapade caused him to lose his chairmanship and seek treatment for alcoholism.

Sanford Crosses the Line
South Carolina governor Mark Sanford's scandal involved an Argentinian journalist named Maria.  We all remember his three-hour televised meltdown where he said this "was a whole lot more than a simple affair; this was a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."  Very creepy.

Where Is The Actual Line?