I want Xanga lifetime.

SO - I'm trying to earn enough credits to get there. I'm sure that some of you have noticed that I've had incredibly generous friends who give me 1000 eprops on blogs that are ... well, lets face it.  They aren't all that superior.  They've been giving me the mini's to help me in my quest. 

Xanga is kind of cheap.  Whenever someone leaves me a 1000 eprop mini, I get 100 credits.  But still, that's 100 closer to my goal!

I'm at 40,414 as of this morning.

It's taking longer than I had hoped to earn the credits.  I apparently am not the right demographic for most of the surveys that have been out there to help you earn 2,000 credits.  But I'm persistent. 

Since yesterday was Mother's Day, my boys presented me with objects signifying their affections.  Michael, who has carefully observed over the past two and a half weeks as I've made good use of my insomnia to finish 17 of the books in my "to be read" pile, gave me a book mark.  He encouraged me to set a book aside long enough to actually use it. 

Tucker gave me an oil painting that he's been working on.  We talked about how the painting should be framed.  Where it should be hung.  And then he said, "And when I move out, I'll want to take it with me so I can remember you." 

But in the meantime, I can enjoy it all I want. 

For every ailment under the sun

There is a remedy, or there is none;

If there be one, try to find it;

If there be none, never mind it.

I watched the last installment of Oprah and Eckhart's discussion of "A New Earth" last night.  There were many profound statements about joy, accetance, enthusiasm and the like.  But the thing that made the biggest impression on me was when Oprah asked on behalf of all the curious how old Eckhart is.

I'll admit, I've been curious because he has this timeless quality about him.  I had decided that he might be about my age, or a tad younger.  (I'll be 45 in June.)  No, the man is 60 years old.  His skin is smooth, his eyes are clear, he has almost no wrinkles, and his hair is thick and brown.  He's 60.

If being zen keeps you looking like that?  Sign me up.

New rule, from here on out, when someone cuts me off in traffic, I will hear the sound of one hand clapping and I will think to myself, "peace, joy, and good skin"

Did I mention that the man is 60?!?

So I ran across this story* while browsing through the headlines yesterday. 

"Penis Theft Panic Hits City .."

It appears that a number of men are accusing others of being sorcerers who have the power to curse.  As proof, they display their shrunken, stunted, puny, little ... "members" ... The accused sorcerers are then attacked by lynch mobs determined to do them in before they have opportunity to rob others of their ... "vitality".

Does it not seem at all likely that MAYBE these accusers were little to start with?

I couldn't fix the link so I've copied and pasted the entire story below.  With apologies to Reuters ...

*Penis theft panic hits city..

By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.

"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.

Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mary Gabriel)