so i'm reading laughingmeme as i'm wont to doing and am enjoying his allconsuming soap client, which is inspired by dj's booktalk. a few posts down, i start getting a little wierded-out because he's written the post i would have written yesterday had i been sufficiently motivated to fully articulate my thoughts about allconsuming. i didn't get it. it seemed like this thing on the periphery of my understanding, something that seemed like it should warrant further investigation, but it took dj to bring it out of the aether and make it concrete.

kellan also points out something i've been struggling with regarding defining "friends" in these kinds of applications:

"I clicked on the "edit friends list", with a certain trepidation, as I never know the protocols for declaring someone "a friend" in these online communities. Allcomsuming short circuited this problem by asking Google who my friends are: rabble, dru, micah, pseudopunk, and a few names I didn't recognize."

i mean, who is my foaf friend? what are the rules? allconsuming solves the problem in an interesting way, but are there some sort of generalizeable ground rules? as is not unique in the blogging world, i'm acquainted with many people, but does this mean i can just willy, nilly put them in my foaf file ? do i have to e.mail them and ask them if they'll be my foaf friend, pretty please?

anyway, i'm ruminating on this and much more as i'm slowly scrolling through his post and that's when i see that he's linked to me as the source for discovering dj's booktalk and i'm reminded that sometimes the universe has a very dry sense of humor.