I don’t know why I felt compelled to tell you that. 

I guess in case someone starts posting crazy shit here on my Xanga account.

Or uses my info to learn I have an email account under ordinarybutloud. Yeah. I know. Nerve-wracking. 

We are still traveling.

I don’t know how Xanga is doing in re: getting saved. For several days the imminent crash of Xanga sucked up most of my mental energy, but then we set off across the country and other things took precedence.

Suddenly I’m very tired.

my latest vacation blog. 

@Roadkill_Spatula just posted an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly about social media in general and FB in particular. While I was reading it, two things popped into my mind:

1) I like to blog. I like to write for other people. I never really thought of Xanga as a place to meet people; that was just a happy incidental. My goal was to do what I’d been doing for decades, writing in spirals I hid under my bed, and do it in front of other people. It was my hope that I’d get more comfortable with the idea of sharing my writing. It only took eight or nine years, but I’m happy to say it worked. And in the meantime, I accidentally met a lot of really cool people. But I’ve always thought of blogging as writing. I’ve never thought of Xanga and FB as being the same thing…it was mystifying to me when so many of my Xanga friends disappeared when FB came along, because I was all, uh, what are they doing over there?! Posting one-liners? Status updates? Really?!?

I see now that I have an out-of-step approach to the idea of writing online. But that’s okay. Lots of other people do too, thank goodness.

2) Today I had the opportunity to have a long conversation with my dad about his investment philosophy. He retired in the early 90s and has been living on the income from his nest egg since then, thanks to his investment prowess. The conversation clarified for me why Facebook was a wrong investment for so many people. For some years, I’ve wished I had enough money to buy individual stocks, because I want to buy GAP. I have a good feeling about GAP. But that’s kind of a side issue on this particular post, so I’m going to leave it at that. But the point I was making is that social media and investing and the idea of “venture capitalism” was front and center for me, today. 

this is me whispering about today’s wordpress post. 

I really don’t know the first thing about blogging. I found this site 9 years ago and then I grudgingly adopted each new feature that came along when I absolutely couldn’t avoid it anymore. For example, I didn’t understand how to “friend” people on here for about three years after Xanga added the “friend” function. And the mini thing completely cracked me up. I gave minis willy nilly, I admit. It took me a long time to upload my first photo. (years). I’ve had…I can’t even tell you how much trouble…with the “themes” and what-have-you. Anyone remember when we got the new homepage and the universal inbox? For maybe…I don’t know…18 months…I just clicked on the link that said, “take me back to my old homepage” because I didn’t know how to use the new one.

So, I’m not a super-picky, features-driven, highly technical, savvy consumer kind of blogger, is what I’m telling you.

When I first read the Relaunch Xanga post it mentioned wordpress. So I went to wordpress.org. I couldn’t understand anything about wordpress.org. (in theory I now realize it’s the engine that underlies the interfaces I see in various places, but at the time I was all blah blah internet hooey blah).

So I went to wordpress.com.

I decided to see if it would be hard to have a blog on wordpress. 

It turned out to be easy. It turned out to be super duper easy, even for someone like me, who still forgets to “friend” people on Xanga.

Things I like: if you already have your own community, it’s basically exactly the same as blogging here, because you already have a community. But I could see where it would be exceedingly hard to build a community on your own, if you just struck out on wordpress alone like a voyager to a new world. I like the weblog editor quite a lot. There are two of them, which is confusing, but the one on my “dashboard” is quite fancy while the one on my “reader” is streamlined enough to be easy for my iPad. I like the Reader page where I can find all the blogs I’m following. I like threaded comments. I like the dialogue box that notifies me about new comments. I like control over comments and how they’re posted or moderated or what-have-you. I love the “freshly pressed” theme-based Xanga-like front page, and have already found some fun and witty new blogs to read.

Things I don’t like: No private messages. The “reader” blogs are displayed in giant boxes which means I have to do quite a lot of scrolling to see what I’ve missed if I’m away for a day. I fear missing comments, because my dialogue box isn’t as big as the number of comments I might get if I’m away for a day. It feels a little more…public….over there. One upside to blogging on a place like Xanga where I’m a lot older than the age of the average user and where no one even thinks to come unless they’ve been on Xanga forever is that the odds of a person in my real life stumbling on my blog were zero. But then again, I really need to get over myself on that.

The key, of course, is to make sure that your Xanga friends are in your circle of friends on wordpress. During my nine years on Xanga I’ve had periods where my list of regular readers was down to like 3 or 4 people. I just kept blogging and sooner or later, more people found me, and I found them. I kinda think it will be same way on wordpress, although I can’t be certain.

Paying $1 a week for Xanga wouldn’t bother me in the least. It’s really a matter of where my friends are and what opportunity I have to meet other like-minded people. I occasionally feel like my opportunities for meeting new people on Xanga are limited, because even though I hear people say there are “1 million blogs,” or hundreds of thousands of blogs, it often feels to me like there are only about 250 regular bloggers on Xanga. There were more people than that in my high school graduating class, by a lot. And of course, of the 250, I probably interest (and am interested in) only ten or twenty percent.

I mean that in the absolutely least snobby way possible, says the person who knows she inadvertently sounds snobby sometimes.

Years ago I signed up on blogger. I blogged to myself without one single reader two or three or four times. Then I thought, eh, no. WordPress so far is turning out to be a good experience for me.

my wordpress blog

One thing I’ve learned this week: the xanga “community” means precisely the same thing and completely unique things to every person on here. I’m not going to list the members of my community because you know who you are ( I hope), you know I love you ( likewise) and I am terrified I might inadvertently leave someone off and that would be awful.

But the point is, if you’re surrounded by the bloggers who make your life interesting and amusing and connected ands awesome, it makes little difference where you are.

i have a lot of platform comparison comments to make, but I’m still typing on glass. So not today.

today’s not-meta blog is at: 

http://ordinarybutloud.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/best-laid-plans-and-plans-that-werent-really-laid-very-well-but-sounded-good-in-theory/

(not yelling, @complicatedlight )

Posts move from “5000 Ways to Save Xanga!” and “My Xanga Story!” to “I Wish These *7%^suckers Would Just Pledge Or Get Over Themselves.”

At least, over the past nine years that’s the way Xangevents usually seemed to go down.

Which is good with me. I mean, I’m cool with it. It does severely curtail my ability to talk about two different topics on my two blogs, as I can really only generate one genuine, real-life topic per day, and was counting on The Demise of Xanga to function as my second topic for some weeks.

Five weeks and some days, if you want to be specific.

I thought the post done by @slmret for today was interesting and helpful, for people who may not have realized that Xanga wouldn’t be located on wordpress, but would merely be powered by wordpress, in the event it raises its money.

Years ago I was on a message board with a group of internet strangers. I met a lot of them in person. Once we all met in person the whole place kinda fell apart. It was an issue-based falling-apart, believe it or not, which is weird. People simply couldn’t wrap their minds around other people’s political/religious/moral views. I got caught in the middle of some bizarre battles over things that seemed (to me) completely irrelevant to the question of friendship (which, in my opinion, is a formidable question all by itself).

Anyway, that’s how I came to Xanga. I floated around in a couple of other forums and @transvestite_rabbit suggested Xanga in a message intended for me and some other people as well. 

GENUINE REAL-LIFE TOPIC FOR TODAY.

We all work through our grief in our own way, is all I’m saying.

How come the hopeful way seems so much more noble than the rational, skeptical way?

I ask you.

How’s this for a Xanga conundrum: if everyone else in the Xanga community ponies up $48 per person and Xanga launches a new and exciting website on wordpress for paying bloggers and becomes a whole thing, like a sensation or something, like a real thing, I’m going to be so ashamed of myself for thinking the whole idea sounds nutty that I won’t be able to sign up and become a paying blogger.

Watched a weird movie last night with Matthew McConaughey where he played a dude called Killer Joe. That odd and disturbing movie will forever be linked in my mind with this Xanga debacle.

AGAIN, WITH A NEW POST.

It’s like I actually blog more now. (I know, it hardly seems possible).

These days Xanga feels like a community of believers and skeptics in a world with an absent God.

A Post comes! A Post! From the Leaders!

It’s ambiguous (The Post), it’s a little unusual in the world of business plans and customary business practices and what-have-you, but it comes with a link! And a plea! And if you Google, you find links to mysterious online journals discussing the post and the appearance of the Xanga God!

It doesn’t really even require any faith, The Post, because no credit cards will be charged unless enough people believe!

All you have to do to be a good person, a good Xangan, one of the faithful, is say that you believe, and pledge.

But if you’re a bad Xangan, a skeptical Xangan, a Xangan who is always trying to poke holes in the dreams of others or mean-spiritedly refuse to join in on oddly confusing movements with uncertain goals and questionable methods (I never did get around to joining one of those Occupy Wall Street groups), you’re selfishly sitting on your credit card number until………………something else happens.

Maybe The Post will be followed up by Another Post! Or a Sign!! A Miracle! Maybe @edlives is a prophet! (apologies to @edlives, whom I don’t know, and whose Xanga-End-Times posts have been inspiring and hopeful and generally helpful, unlike my own).

It’s just a little weird, isn’t it? I mean, to ask a community of anonymous blogging strangers for so much money and then disappear (again)? 

Am I even allowed to post this?! It seems like it might be heretical or blasphemous or something.

I’m sorry, because I love Xanga too, I love it, but not in the way I love my sister or my dog. More in the way I love my Kitchen-Aid mixer. I mean, I really love Xanga. I feel like I probably shouldn’t have to say this to you, lovely Xanga readers, but I have proof that I love Xanga: 1) I’ve blogged here nearly daily since 2004 (wow, that’s something, right?!). 2) I paid Xanga $100 to be a member of it for its lifetime (which sadly, appears to be over, worse luck for me).  3) I’ve blogged about how much I love Xanga for years. 4) I almost went to a Xanga meet-up once, before I lost my nerve. 

So, I mean, I love it, but yeah, not like that. I mean, I love it like a business. Like a really, really, really awesome business I’ve used every day for the last nine years. Like my dry cleaners. Like the mailbox store where they know my name and get my mail out of my PO box without making me remember the key. Like that.

Not really like a relative with a terrible problem who needs my help.

Maybe like a relative with a terrible problem who needs my help who hasn’t called me in fifteen years, or written me any thank-yous for the Christmas gifts I sent, or returned any of my calls.

But no, probably not even like that. 

TONIGHT.

(a dark and quiet midnight on the eve of the last day in May. A seven-year-old girl sleeps peacefully in her mother’s bed, along with a thirty-pound dog, Spongebob Squarepants, nunny the pink rattling bunny blanket, and Saige the American Girl Doll).

GIRL: Mama! I need the bathroom!

(girl pukes all over the bedroom floor, on the bed, on the carpet, on Spongebob).

MOTHER: …

(*RING RING* telephone suddenly and jarringly rings)

VOICE ON PHONE:  I’m just calling to let you know Mr. OBL’s grandfather just died.

(*clackety clack* mother turns to internet for solace)

XANGA IS DYING.

(suddenly, as if no time at all has passed, it’s 7:00 a.m.)

I thought perhaps if I gave you a dramatic reenactment you could get a better picture of the timing, because it was awesome. No, really, it was awesome. The rest of the unfortunate events (absent babysitter, fight with mother, fight with Medicare, confrontation with writing group woman, 10 hour drive back and forth to 2 hour funeral, internet, television and phone service down for 24 hours) didn’t really happen in such awesomely quick succession, so aren’t as suited for dramatic reenactment.

Not that I couldn’t do it; I could, I could, I tell you.

TODAY.

I’m sure it’s not and what-have-you and yada yada, Xanga O Xanga (hasn’t someone written an anthem by now?), I love you Xanga, I believe in you, etcetera.

Nevertheless, it’s a little weird, people asking for money in this way.

Not for nothing, let’s say I was distressed at the apparently imminent shutdown of Xanga, and I wanted to continue blogging around my anonymous community of inscrutable avatars and questionable profiles. But say I was worried, at the same time, about how weird it is for someone online to ask me to provide a credit card number just so they can maybe set up some kind of [blah blah servers outsourced unsourced code blah blah programming language platform yada yada], contingent on whether or not other people give them a combined total of SIXTY FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS in pre-paid memberships in a prospective company by July 15.

What’s to stop me from, oh, I don’t know, waiting to see if there actually is going to be a company and then logging onto WordPress on July 16 and becoming a new Xanga user (for $48 a year, presumably…and why 48? Why? (oops, wrong math) one dollar per week = 4 dollars per 4-week months = 48 dollars per year, I mean, it’s elegant, but a little weird, no?)?

Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t be as…I don’t know…sentimentally supportive…or loving, or something. I mean, it would probably be more optimistic and kindhearted and maybe less……..cynical……..if I just pulled out ye ol’ credit card and gave it to some guy allegedly named John who last posted on Xanga in…when was it…2007? I can’t remember. I’ve been here a long time. 

And, I mean, John seemed like a nice guy. I remember he posted really cute photos of his cute wife and cute kid and all. And because I tend to believe whatever I see on the internet, I’m pretty sure that guy with the super cute babies and the nice wife and everything is probably John, and John is probably sitting in some room in some building with a sign on the door that says Xanga, and I even know a guy in real life who lives a life kinda like that and could probably be John, in a parallel universe, so I don’t dispute that it’s possible. 

I lack enough information to form an opinion about how likely it is.

It was a little weird when it took such a long lonnnnnnnnggggg time to get a TRUE badge, when I applied after six years of daily blogging. I’m sure that doesn’t say anything about John or Xanga or the probable use of my funds, which after all, are protected by laws and banks and what-have-you, leaving me basically invulnerable to fraud, but still.

When someone starts a new business, say, a service like a gym or something, do they normally sell memberships prospectively so they can afford to buy all the gym equipment? 

I don’t know.

Wait…I know! John works for WordPress now, doesn’t he?! It’s genius!!! In a minute I’m going to come back and link you to my new blog.

TODAY