what happened was just this... I was minding my own business wandering aimlessly through life taking for granted that everything I love will remain where I put it when I looked up and found one of my top friends missing... now this happened before and I was able to email the friend and find out what happened and maintain the connection, which is the essential aspect of life for me and that was a relief...

but this time I am not sure I have another way to reach this friend... which brings me to realize that I have, since expanding to 24 top friends some long time ago, pretty evenly divided the group of 24 into three groups of eight... except for a couple of exceptions, the first eight being people I actually have met and hugged in the flesh... the second eight being people on the internet who've endeared themselves to me enough to inspire me to imagine I've met them and hugged them and shared more than just words... and the third group of eight are musicians and bands...

well, this person who disappeared was in the second group and might be considered one of the exceptions (hey, every group has to have an exception or two or things just get way too conservative and that's just bad, much worse than liberal, no matter what the last thirty years of spin-doctoring has done to your mental dictionary, but we are digressing)...

the person who disappeared was one of the first few people I found on myspace and her smile was so infectious that I added her as a friend and I kept her there in my top 24 even as my friend links exploded into four digits... and now she's gone... alas, poor Zoë, I knew her not well, but with kindness of thought and sweetness of heart I held her gently in my mind...

yeah Shakespeare, we know...

yes, so anyway, the point of this entry is to lead up to the events of last night (and I shall write it out now in spite of the fact that I have to be at work in three hours and have yet to sleep... I ate chocolate, enough said)...

so as I was saying, there I was minding my own business (which is, by the way, wandering aimlessly) and found a missing person on my top friends list... that was some time earlier in the week, maybe even over the weekend... I intended to take a bit of a break from the net this week as I was very busy at work and sometimes the mood just strikes me to walk away for a few days (I might be part Australian), but last night while I was casually watching all the episodes of Heroes on the Sci-Fi channel, I started randomly looking for Zoes on myspace...

now being that myspace does not have a bureau of missing persons, I decided to do a search and the search came up with thousands and thousands of Zoes... I narrowed the search a bit and started randomly clicking on profiles (cuz that is what I do around here, though I do not always search for a specific group to choose from... though there was that time just after Warped Tour when Dia's smile was haunting me {in a nice way} and I searched for Megs because I was trying to find Meg and Dia's myspace... I sent out a lot of Add Requests to random Megs that day.. and there was the Brooklyn people search too... and others, but that's besides the point like most parenthetic tangents are)...

one interesting anomaly I found was dozens of Zoes with the same picture with just one or a very few friends all created in September (and really a lot on September 22 and 23) and I sent add request to a lot of those same-person Zoes just cuz it seemed like an amusing thing to do at the time... and she had interesting eyes too (yes, the first thing I see is whatever photo is in the profile and interesting eyes always get my attention... haunting smiles come next, in case you wondered... and odd photos, definitely the odd photo will have me checking out a profile... sometimes I just add without even checking out the profile cuz the picture is just that good (I figure if I am stealing the picture, it's not so bad if the person is on my friends list... logic, no doubt)...

and that, my dear Zoes, is why you may have an add request from this total stranger... and now that you know, you can decided what to do with me from a more knowledgeable perspective... yes, I am a bit batty... bonkers... silly as a goose... ridiculously addicted to babbling and rhyming and romantic tendencies... and the odd sarcasm, cynicism, rant or utter nonsense from time to time... and we musn't forget irreverence, seriously... one of my heroes is Dr. Seuss, ok?...

as I've said in my profile (which you hopefully read) and in one of my earlier posts about adding friends here at myspace, it you want to know why I specifically sent you an add request, just ask... there's almost always more reason than the superficial interest in the photo you chose for your profile... not that I don't lust, I mean, I am passing for human in this life after all... but I pass on a lot more sexy naked profile pictures than I explore because there's got to be something more for me... well, most of the time (I'm doing ok at this being human thing, right?)...

this entry would have been more intricately woven into a tapestry of random tangents and ponderous asides and things that make you go hmmmm had I not skipped sleep tonight (it is morning here and being awake for work is just over two hours away) and besides, Precious just put on the latest bootleg copy of the latest Say Anything CD (so I'm not actually listening to ...Is A Real Boy, but that's the only full Say Anything CD they had on myspace) and the lyrics are grabbing my ears and distracting my mind and in my sleep deprived state all I can do is continue rambling and laugh...

I did update my RealTime blog tonight after a rare skipped couple of days and then, instead of sleeping (I mean, you were just dying to know what I was doing all night before I came here to explain why hundreds of Zoes received Add Requests from me last night, right?)... I started another new blog (yes, another... I don't know how many that makes, I lost count around 30 or so) that will eventually be linked somewhere, somehow, but if you want a secret show sneak peak exclusive preview deal, just call me or look for onceinlove at blogspot... there, now you know...

it has everything to do with the night... the date, I mean... it's an anniversary and perennial purveyor of profuse inspiration so predictable that persons of powerful psychic abilities have seen spoons previously unaffected up and bend all by themselves (ok, so maybe I should have stayed away from the P alliteration there... at least I didn't go off on a V tirade)... of course there are years when this date passes without a glance back at the history that created the anniversary, or a whimper even, but this year was not one of those years... I didn't plan to be up all night... I didn't intend to start another new blog... I did not mean to continue obsessing over my romantic dreams and Quixotic obsessions...

but I did and I'd do it again (just like that old commercial about eating the last of the cereal, though I think she really meant to do that)... and being that this entry could go on all weekend if I had today off or the one showed up at my door inviting me to play hooky with her and spend a long weekend getting to know that we've always known each other (and sharing mad passion, naturally) and I have no reasonably logical or nearly cool segue into a fond farewell and tie up all the loose ends type of exit, I'll just stop right here...

so farewell my little Zoes and all you other wonderful readers of rhymes and rambles who happened by tonight or tomorrow or whenever... it has been a pleasure imagining that you are actually bored and crazy sensitive and intelligent enough to have enjoyed the time you've spent here and even a little exciting to think you might have understood something... it's been fun...

nite nite :)