Lurking is not a bad word!

Recently someone sent me a digest from a DigiCult listserv in which the users are debating the term "lurk" and its connotations.
I wish someone had asked me about it since I've been thinking and writing on LURK since 1997.
And here's what I think, in a nutshell: lurk, offline=negative social connotation, like Sartre's voyeur or Spike or Angel (vampires) on Buffy.
lurk, online=term from Usenet, appropriate etiquette that can be stretched and used to understand how many websites and online spectacles address computer users. To lurk is not negative or anti-social (necessarily). We all lurk these days but if you are placing the term in conversation with online community or participatory culture, that's another thing and complications arise.
Just don't forget that the online etymology for lurking is different than the OED version.

blogs don't die, they just fade away

So I haven't posted here in roughly, um, a year and a half. maybe I just suck at time management but I've been genuinely busy during these past months--I got married, I worked a whole lot, I got sick with various inconvenent ailments, I went to Seattle, Vancouver, California, Hawaii, California, Pennslyvania, Chicago and other places too. (Note to self: Volcanoes National Park=inspiration for every alien planet film/TV sequence ever.) I swam with sea turtles, moray eels (eek!) and beautiful fishes.

I wrote quite a lot and the book is in a good place lately, smack full of original scholarship and ideas. Am working on interesting stuff.

I took care of our sick dog and watched her die. I found us a new dog and have watched her become part of the family.

I read things great and small: more Anne Lamott, Joan Didion, E.B. White (again). Numerous issues of numerous magazines (current favorites are Blueprint, Everyday Food and that old workhorse In Style, which I always use to explain the culture industry to my classes). And for work: Foucault, Virilio, Jenkins, Chun, McCarthy, Cubitt, Galloway and oh so many more.

So why post again? It's not like I suddenly have more time or am filled with news all of a sudden.
I guess I'm just feeling bloggy thoughts. Things that belong on halfbakery. Or something like that.

Yesterday I heard these philosophers on the radio telling jokes. Here's a good one.
A snail gets robbed by two turtles. The police ask him for a description of the turtles and he replies, "I don't know, it just happened so fast."