Did you try too?

"The axis of evil." It kind of grows on you, doesn't it? That's why I set off to see who grabbed the domain name, figuring it would be gone, and it was:

Congratulations to johnboy, the proud papa of axisofevil.com, born January 29, 2002!

Helgeland, Clair John
johnboy@visi.com
2151 COMO AVE
SAINT PAUL, MN 55108-1807
US

If he puts up a site, let's hope he sides with good and not with, well, evil.

Oh, and b!x, you should know that assesofevil.com is still available. Hurry, supplies won't last!

Name Calling Among World Leaders Escalates
New insults take the form of Yo Mama jokes

film at 11.

the asses of evil

This from the one true b!x, who encapsulates the mighty one's state of the union in his latest blog:

Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft -- the Asses of Evil -- are asking these nations, begging these nations, to try something. Try anything. Hit us again. So we can wipe you off the face of the then-bloody Earth.

Madmen. Every single fucking one of them. Theirs and ours alike.

If it weren't so true, it would be hysterical.

This blog has gotten far too depressing. For me at least. Let me take a cue from my fellow blog chroniclers and summarize some of my more interesting findings this fine Friday. Let's run through them, shall we?

You got your everyday "lady nurses a monkey" story. What is there to say?

Craig at BookNotes is incredibley prolific. [ed.--I thought I remembered reading that he was the last liberal in texas, but on further exploration of his blog, I'm not sure where he's from, but his blog is indeed awesome.]

Doc's talking about Jackson Browne, and then gives us a disturbing hollywood update--Jeff Bridges sings?

RageBoy's back--He's going to the movies.

Helen Razer made me a really cool graphic for this blog, which I have to figure out how to incorporate, and I will.

I am completely digging Mike Golby's blog, and his human nature.

Marek hasn't blogged since his soul food for thought. You okay Marek?

I think this is b!x's mom.

That's all for now.

My friend marge calls from Rochester. I miss her so much it still hurts. She says, "Are you okay? I've been reading your blog." Think about the connections in our connection. I had just finished posting--she's at the other end, looking at her monitor, sees my pain. My flat screen, a two-way mirror. The kind where concerned social workers watch family therapy sessions, invisible, observing the grief and anguish from a distance. Then we reconnect--coversation--over the phone, voice to voice. Ah--refreshing. I tell her ya, I'm okay. Margie, I'm okay, well, except for wanting it to be okay.

I miss ya Margie. I miss our camelot, the biosphere, oz.

Damn that wizard.

In hiding
I lie silent at last
I am free from my past
I walk among the tall trees
This is beauty I know
I am in love with it all
I have the freedom to love
In hiding

-Genesis, In Hiding

Split, twist, engage, extend, morph, converge. Sometimes, you're 40 years old before you find out that something you always thought was so isn't. Shall we say I had a revealing therapy session yesterday? Yes, let's just say that. These truths that are emerging about my life--what do they have to do with blogging? I think everything. In writing ourselves into existence (as David Weinberger describes this little exercise of ours), we have a chance to change what was wrong the first time around.

Born again blogging.

It goes like this. You reach inside your soul--where else are you going to get all this material, the stuff that matters--and you pull out all of your collective experiences, understandings, rights and the wrongs, all better known as baggage. You approach this clean slate--the net, your blog--and you begin to define yourself.

Come out from hiding and share your life with the universe.
Man, there's no better way to see how fucked it's been.

And it's not always the things we write about--sometimes the significance is in the omission. The things I don't blog. But still, they inform my writings. There is no hiding in good blogging.

So back to therapy. Things are happening, coming undone. Lies and Truth have intersected and I stare at the axis, blinking. Amazed. confused.

Where have I been?
W-h-e-r-e have I been?

There is comfort in pretending, in hiding, which is why I think a few posts back--in leaving my read of Cixous--I was comfortable to stay in exile. Remember that? That's where Cixous left me. Wrapped in the notion of exile. And I thought that was where I needed to be.

With no camoflage left
Naked I stand shaking
Waiting for rebirth.

All I'm saying is this: The connections we make on the net are helping us rewrite our real world selves even more dramatically than our online selves. Yep, I need to explore further, and I will give personal examples, but not tonight. For tonight I will say that connections alone are not enough. They are not the end, they are a means. Something happens, is happening, to me and to you because we're here. Something not defined by google search results or inside our blogs. It's physical. It's tangible. What is resonating with you? Where will it take you? How are you different because you've been? Who are you becoming?

I am not who I was. And I'm not alone.