One-Way

It seems that many more people have been updating their Xangas as of late. I know this not because I still keep up with Xanga - for I gave up that particular indulgence long ago - but because I've recently used my Hotmail account to qualify for a free blockbuster online trial and it just so happens that's the particular inbox that all of my Xanga subscriptions are sent to. With that said, during the heydays of Xanga, I was as avid a blogger as the most post-happy Xangans. On certain lazy, goalless summer days, I could be easily counted on for two if not three posts within a 16 hour period. I had all the punctuality of the morning, afternoon, and evening post without any of the property-damaging delivery by thirteen year-olds on Huffys. And even though in this day and age, the delivery of our paper news source no longer fits into the triple time slot, I have no doubt that my blog could have gone toe-to-toe with any of them 20 years ago. After all, how could anyone with any sense of taste in culinary art not find fascinating the fact that the cherry tomato in my lunch salad looked exactly like an incredibly sunburned Snoopy? (Or perchance Snoopy's distant Scottish cousin "McSnoopy"? - yet another testament to the brilliance of my blog.) Those were the good times, when material flowed from freely from my fingertips and I allowed my prejudices to fly uninhibited throughout the blogosphere. Hell, back then people didn't even use the word blogosphere, and knowing me, I'd probably have made a post dedicated to the pure inanity of the trendy cyber-term in a cynical-sarcastic tone not very unlike this one. The world was mine to suspect through jaded green lenses, thick and sure, like the suddy well of a Heiniken, and whatever I chose to miss was immediately deemed trivial. But alas, those golden days of say-anything and bash-everyone have passed me by, or rather, I hope to have moved on. The waxing and waning of the temporal tides have imparted me with a crusty layer of broken shells inscribed of half-truths and gray rules, and things one-sided have taken on the tragic burdens of a new dimension (Self-proclamation of enlightenment was never a pretty side of me). By all means, Xanga wasn't just a blog, it was the mark of an era of freedom and irresponsibility, albeit a very personal one.