So throughout this downfall of the economy, I have been very lucky and fortunate. I've heard of people losing their jobs, not finding work, losing their pay and benefits, losing yearly raises, wage and hiring freezes, and so on and so forth. I lost 5%, but did not lose any benefits. I did not lose my job. In fact, I got somewhat of a promotion. Not that long ago, we got our 5% back.

Anyway, I do a good job at what I do. I've done a good job at every position I've held at my place of employment. I'm also a nice, genuine person. Do you see where this is going?

People tease me about being a brown noser. Some people are serious about it. I do not agree with this. Sure, management takes notice of my good and diligent work. But I do not act nice and do what they tell me for personal gain. It's simply a benefit of being a hard worker and nice on top of it. Yes, I get along with the boss, but I get along with almost every body.

Today the boss was there (she's normally in the other facility), and my supervisor asked me to follow him to conference room 20... which is simply outside at the door to the office. My heart dropped into my stomach, because my lead had told me a couple weeks ago they were planning on moving me to a different area. I don't want to be moved. But they had other news to tell me.

They offered me a position that would add to what I'm already doing. I will be investigating damaged parts assigned to our company and try to prove that we didn't do it, that someone else did it. Essentially, this position has been created to save the company money. The first month will be a trial period for me. Depending on how I do, I will be reviewed and there will be a pay increase of at least $1 more an hour. This position was held by someone last year, but when he quit, they never hired anyone to replace him.

I was chosen because I already work with rejected parts. I know the process and how things work. So when I told my coworkers about it, there were some that were quite bitter. Saying things like, "I just find it amazing that someone who's worked here for less time than me will be making more," and talking about how me and the boss are BFFs.

Okay. So why do we need to be such a bitch about it? Because I do a good job and it's appreciated? Why do I have to somehow be in bed with the boss in order to get these opportunities? Isn't that what we strive for at our jobs? For our good work to be noticed and appreciated and get opportunities because of it?

Your attitude is noticed. I guess because I'm nice that means I'm a brown noser. I guess that I'm not "real" or something. Do I have to be a bitch to be "real"? I am genuine to who I am. Who I am is a person with integrity and honesty. I'm sorry I don't act like a bitch when I don't get what I want, or when someone gets an opportunity for advancement and I don't. I came back from lunch, and she taps my shoulder as she walks by and asks if I had lunch with my BFF Karen. I said no. She goes, "Oh, I'd bet you'd li-ike toooo," in the bitchiest tone ever. Really?

Somehow I no longer want this promotion if I'm going to get so much grief for it.

It's not something that I shout from the rooftops or just tell people, but I am bisexual.

Having grown up with no religion in my life, I never had the misfortune of having to justify my sexuality with my religion. I know that's something a lot of Christians struggle with (which I really don't understand why the religion is so against homosexuality).

I never saw it as an issue in my life. It was a little confusing when I was with my ex-girlfriend, but also because it was my first relationship. I was with her, and I thought I was just bisexual, because a year prior I had completely fallen in love with this guy Mike (nothing ever came of that... which is probably best). Then I dated Dallas a while after Susan and I broke up. When I was with Dallas it was more confusing. Because of a certain situation, I thought I was a lesbian. I thought this for a long time.

Now, I know for a fact that I am bisexual. I am still very much attracted to men. I guess Dallas just wasn't the guy for me at all, and it was a bad time for me to be with him. So I have struggled with this a little bit in the past, but now I am comfortable with who I am.

However. There is one thing that's been hard for me from the start. Telling my family and close friends. I lost 2 best friends when I first came out of the closet. Why? Because both of them were devout Christians. Family was harder. All of my sisters know. My mom and step dad knows. One of my aunts on my mom's side know. And that is all. I've never told my dad. I never knew what to say to him. So I never did. I think he's suspected it in the past, but we've never discussed it. My mom thinks it's disgusting. She was disappointed when I told her. Then she was always pushing me dating men and kept telling me all these guys she could set me up with (this was when I thought I was a lesbian). My sisters don't care, and the aunt that knows is bisexual herself. Am I ashamed to tell the rest of my family members? Maybe. Because I know they find it disgusting and wrong. I also don't know how to say it. But I am not ashamed to BE bisexual.

Hmm.

Last night on How I Met Your Mother there was a hot lesbian kiss at the end. So there was a few coworkers by me today, Cody, Tony, and Ameer. I was like, "Last night on How I Met Your Mother there was this hot lesbian kiss." Tony said, "You got all excited, didn't you?" I said, "Yeah, it was pretty awesome." Then I was like, "My dad got mad at me the other day because we were watching some show and there was a guy with no shirt on and I was like, 'OMG!!' and he told me to calm down. But he was frickin HOT!!" Ameer kind of shook his head, and Tony was like, "Crystal, I think you confused him." Tony and Cody already know that I'm bi, so it wasn't that big of a deal for them to hear this from me.

Anyways, that's all I had to say.

Talking about vibrators at work with a female coworker... Cody was amused that we were talking about them. But I told her about the episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians last night where they were house hunting and they opened the drawer of the nightstand and saw several vibrators. One of them somehow got turned on and they shut the drawer... and it was rattling around in there

Do you have any sex toys? What kinds of sex toys do you have?

Maybe I'm over stepping my bounds because I don't have children, but I think there's a huge problem with the current generation of parents. Every day I watch the news and see some outrageous story of something a parent did. Like the other day, they played a video of two girls wrestling and throwing punches, over a pair of shorts, while the parents watched and cheered them on. What.

This post is actually being written because I had a conversation with somebody last week that actually disgusted me.

This guy asked me what I do when I go home. Weird, right? Anyway, I tell him that I play a lot of video games, and he starts rattling off the games his kids have. One of the games he listed was GTA4. I asked him how old his kids are, and he told me they are 15 and 12. What.

For real? You are letting your 12 year old son play a violent video game?? He told me that he has no doubt his son is mature enough to handle it, because he gets good grades in school, in math particularly. I told him that it doesn't matter how mature you think a kid is. At only 12, a child's brain isn't fully developed and repeatedly playing violent video games could have a very bad effect on the child. He said, "Well, in your opinion." What. In my opinion?? Seriously?? I haven't researched it, but I'm pretty sure what I said is FACT. I'm pretty sure that there have been studies done on this kind of thing.

Games and movies have a rating for a REASON. It's up to parents to regulate what their kids are doing, on what's age appropriate. I knew that some parents just don't care, but to disregard it in such a manner is ridiculous. Why do you think kids these days are so out of control??

The other day, I saw a story on the news about a father who got on a bus full of kids who had been torturing his daughter, who had cerebral palsy. The father was upset because his daughter was now in the hospital on suicide watch. I don't know the whole story, but it sounded like nothing had been done on the school's end to protect his daughter, so he took matters into his own hands and went onto the bus and threatened the kids. I don't blame him.

My youngest sister has been tortured and beat up at school. They threw her phone out of the school bus window. They made up rumors that she was pregnant. My sister was 13 at the time. It doesn't help that parents don't own up to what their kids are doing wrong. If the school or another parents calls and tells them what little Johnny or Susie did, they'll deny it til the cows come home. "No, my kid would never do that!" Grow. Up. Get. Real. Stop living in a fantasy world and own up to the fact that you're letting your kids do whatever they want with no repercussions.

This is out of control. Parents need to step up and be parents. I don't know what they're doing, but they need to be more responsible with their kids. You're raising a human being that's going to go out into the world on their own eventually. Is this the kind of society you want? Get real, people. This isn't The Sims.

Nuff said. She was my first Xanga Crush, even! (I have not revealed any other crushes... but they are there!)

This post made me feel more beautiful with my body than ever before. The media has skewered what people think of beauty, and it's sad. Smaranda's post makes me want to be HEALTHY, not THIN.

<3

It is so wonderful to have such great friends. People who put a smile on your face. The ones who make you feel better on a rainy day. Who encourage you with everything your heart desires. The friends that make your days a little more special, just by knowing they are your friends.

I love to play video games, and I would call myself a moderate gamer, although I've only finished one game: Final Fantasy X. I had to buy the guide book to finish, lol!! Some of the games I have for the PS2 are SSX Tricky, SSX3, SSX On Tour, Black, FFX, FFX-2, FFXII, Kingdom Hearts, GTA3, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas, Tiger Woods 06, and a whole crap load of others.

Now for my PS3, I have COD: Modern Warfare 2, FFXIII, GTA4, Dead Space, and Assassin's Creed. These are the new games I want (I also want the Move):

Assassin's Creed 2
Madden 11
LittleBigPlanet
COD: Black Ops
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Dragon Age: Origins
Tiger Woods 11
Guitar Hero Smash Hits
Mirror's Edge
Aliens VS Predator
Guitar Hero World Tour
Zumba Fitness
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
The Sims 3
L.A. Noire

That's all I've got for now... I'm about to play some COD: Modern Warfare 2!!! =]

What games do you play??

And then this song comes on.... can you say irony?

These damn love songs keep showing up in my iTunes on shuffle. What the hell.

You have to be awesome, like me!! Hahaha, jk!!

Seriously...

So, I've seen some people asking questions about Top Bloggers, Top Blogging, how to get there, and some people that may be jealous of these mysterious ones that are TB's. Really, it's not that hard to get there. TB's are the top 100 blogs in any given 24 hours on xanga. However, the envy of the people is to be on the front page

First, you can't be on lock. What I'm talking about is your privacy settings.

-Sign-in lock. If you want to be on the front page, you can't have this lock on. For the simple fact that if someone who isn't signed in or even have a xanga account, they won't be able to see your blog. Have you ever not signed in right away but see an interesting blog on the front page and clicked on it, only to have Xanga tell you you need to sign in or else you can't view the page?

-Footprints lock. This one I'm actually not too sure about. Basically this lock is to only let people who leave footprints on your site see your posts. You may or may not be able to get into TB's with this lock, I am unsure.

-Friends lock. You can't be in TB's if you have this lock on, for the simple fact that TB's are for traffic on your site. Have you ever clicked on a post on TB's and have it tell you you have to be a friend of the person in order to see their post?

However, you can have your cake and eat it too on xanga. If you want to stay private and still get traffic and comments on your site, just get a lot of new friends!!

Now that the privacy is taken care of, now you need to work on getting traffic. How do you do this? Well, you need to leave comments and footprints all over xanga. Stomp the shit out the bitch. When people see your comments, they'll be all like, "Who's THIS guy (or, who's THIS chick?)? Send friend requests. However, that's not the only thing that's required.... kick ass posts are a must as well.

What kinds of posts grab the attention of people? 3 things, for sure: write about another blogger, write about xanga, and boobs.

-Write about another blogger. Now, I know that people love drama and hating on other xangans can be a popular way to do this.... but I advocate for the like/love/lurve/<3 posts. Why? Because I am a nice person, and I don't like seeing others disrespected, especially publicly. (By the way, I <3 Courtney, Nani, Dan, Stephen, Matt, Rob, Tukha, Amber, Chris.... and more people

-Write about Xanga. These kinds of posts tend to get a lot of attention too. Posts on why you love xanga, posts on why you hate xanga, posts on how xanga could be improved.... not much else to say on this one.

-Boobs. Well, any nudity, really. NSFW posts are very popular. Why? Because xanga is filled with perverts. Well, not really perverts, but we love nudity, sex, and masturbation. We also love the illusion of perverseness. If the title of your post is BOOBS, then you post a photo of a kitty, we love the humor of this. It will be rec'd and commented, no doubt.

Other topics

-News. What's in the news today. Now. Be the first to post someone about a controversial happening, and people will flock. True story.

-Bandwagons. Xangans are total bandwagon jumpers. If there's a certain day someone posted their happiest memory and told everyone else to do it, they will. If you do this, your post for the day will be rec'd and commented. Another true story.

-Life lessons based on personal experience. This one can be touch and go, depending on the topic. If you post about everyone is beautiful no matter what and you once didn't feel pretty but went through a life changing event, this will normally get a good response. Again, it depends on the topic. Deeply personal posts can go either way.

-Humor. If you have a sarcastic sense of humor, xangans love this. However, conveying this through words only can be difficult, and word choice is very important. If you attempt this, you may end up with an epic fail.

A word of caution: Everything in moderation. People will get irritated if you continuously write about the same things and get over it quickly. I use a mixture of these topics.

Another thing that can be useful in your quest to TB's is timestamping. There are those who hate timestampers, and will tell you so. The thing is to do it at the right times, and not too often. Since your inbox only goes back 7 pages, for those with a lot of friends, that does not even cover a 24 hour period of blog posts written. So if you want your blog to be seen by the masses, timestamping a blog post about 3 hours later is about right. Depending on how busy xanga is, you may get away with an hour and a half or 2 hours.

There are more tricks to the trade, but I can't tell you everything!!

The most important thing is to mostly blog for yourself. I know some people may think I'm just an attention whore because I supposedly write only about blogging and other bloggers, but this is not true. Diva_Joyt has said in her blog that I am never boring because I blog about so many things. This is true. I post entertaining stories too, yo!!

I understand that for a lot of people, TB's aren't very important, but there are those trying to get in there... and I'm just trying to help them do that.

Happy blogging

I know that Dan does not need me to defend him, but Dan is a great friend of mine, and I told him that I will pretty much always defend him. I just read this post and I feel like I have to respond, even though I know Dan doesn't take it personally. He even rec'd the post.

First, this person, fortheloveofwasabi, said that they find it "astounding that someone can throw in a picture and a few sentences and get tons of comments, recs, and subscriptions each day while someone who pours his or her soul into three or four meaningful paragraphs can end up with much less or nothing." First of all, Dan has been here on xanga a loooong time. It's taken him time to build up his readership. It doesn't happen overnight! He has something like 27,000 friends!! Dan used to be a lot more open in his blog posts, when he first started blogging. He talks about that every once in a while. Having a lot of subscribers and friends like Dan does, yes, he gets tons of comments and recs. However, not all of them comment every post.

Another thing, if you're so concerned about Dan getting comments and you don't, it's obvious that you're not blogging for yourself. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, just making a statement. Also, depending on the subject matter, heartfelt blog posts don't get much attention anyway. There are a lot of people who don't know what to say to a serious, heartfelt post, or they feel their words are inadequate, so they don't comment at all. When I write a personal post, most of the time I don't get a lot of response at all.

"Many of the topics he chooses to bring up are highly controversial and it seems as if they are brought up simply to start debates." Why is it so bad starting debates? Most of Dan's posts, I don't find offensive because I know what he's doing. "If he had shared his own opinion on the matters, it wouldn't be so bad." If you know Dan, I think you can guess how he feels on a certain topic. You also need to pay attention to his word choice, and how he asks the question.

"However, he is simply mentioning topics that could be found all over several news channels and leaving his readers to fight to the death over who's opinion is right and who's is wrong." There are tons of people who blog about what's happening in the news at any given time. Not every blogger is a personal blogger. And while the word choices of "fight to the death" is quite extreme, debating isn't a bad thing. It's GOOD to debate. It keeps your mind fresh and on edge, and you learn from debating.

The fact of the matter is, Dan is awesome. He is a genuine and caring man, and he truly wants the best for people. I talk to him all the time in messages, and he's always asking how I am. His recent post about Muslims and 9/11 was the first one that pissed me off in a while, but I told him that something as silly as a post would never get in the way of us being friends. True story.

When you have as many friends as Dan, there will always be haters. I think even I have a few haters (how in the hell did THAT happen??). So pretty much any time a hater hates on Dan, there will be me or someone like me defending him. Because that's how it is.

I <3 Dan.