Everything has an opposite: Love has Hate, Night has Day, Reality has ZwebbyVille…

There will be a lot of new people reading about ZwebbyVille today so I thought I should take a few minutes to explain some things.

We all know reality can be very harsh sometimes. I found Spaces at a time when my own reality was very harsh. It was a sort of therapy for me. I found that a short little escape from reality helped me to deal with things as they came up. The time I took to write the silly, nonsensical little stories that I post on ZwebbyVille sort of rebooted my head for the day. You know, cleared the cache, so to speak. And the rougher things were in reality, the further from reality the stories were.

The funny thing is… I found that as people started to read my blog, they needed it too! OK, ‘needed’ may be too strong a word. ‘Enjoyed’ perhaps would be better. But as more and more readers started to show up, the more the blog took on a life of its own.

Here is the current ‘State of ZwebbyVille Address’:

ZwebbyVille is what I named my apartment when I moved in. My two boys, Gman & Cman are part time residents here. In the blog, I have appointed myself Mayor of our little village and the boys are the Town Aldermen. Together we make up the Town Council. There are a few other residents as well; Gilbert is my imaginary friend that I never had as a child, Dr. Hans Von Glutenschnapps is my therapist, and Harry is not only The Barber of Zville but also the town gossip.

My ‘real life’ job has me traveling all over the country. I am away from ZwebbyVille about 35 – 40 weeks a year. As a way of explaining my travels to the readers, I threw my hat into the 2008 Presidential Campaign as an Independent. This way whenever I go to my next job, I am actually on an imaginary Campaign stop in whatever particular city I am in. To avoid the loneliness of the Road, Gilbert accompanies me on these Campaign Tours since he is my running mate for Vice President.

There are many funny occurrences in ZwebbyVille amongst the town-folk and ‘visitors’ from other blogs as well. Gilbert has been ‘borrowed’ for an episode on one blog. Manny the Cat (a Best of MSN site) came to town for a visit once and was thrown in the Town jail. Mr. Pibb (the soda guy) received his Doctorate from the University of ZwebbyVille so that he could compete with Dr. Pepper. And many more. (To the left I have a module of my favorite stories and they will give you an idea of what ZwebbyVille is all about.)

Not every blog deals with ZwebbyVille though. Most are just random little thoughts I have that I find amusing. I have an active imagination and think of my brain as that big file cabinet that is behind the Receptionist at the Doctors Office. You know, the one with all the different colored files that are an obvious code to the people who know what the colors and tabs mean… The problem with my head is I couldn’t afford a very good File Clerk. The one I hired is not only dim-witted, slow and dyslexic but color blind as well. What this means to the reader is that one day they may get a story about how there is a law that states you can’t get elephants drunk, the next day they get a tribute to the Earl of Sandwich, inventor of the sandwich and my Personal ‘Hero’. In other words, the readers are never sure what to expect when they come to Town because I never know what to expect when I start to type out my daily entry. My goal for these readers is to give them a 5 minute break from their reality and make them chuckle at least once or twice.

I know that, after reading some of my entries, there are those out there that are seriously concerned about my sanity. But I figure for whatever time they are thinking about me and my imaginary little village… they aren’t worried about the report that is due to the boss tomorrow or the kid’s doctor’s appointment this afternoon. The more readers that leave ZwebbyVille shaking their head and laughing, the more I have achieved my goal with this blog.

I am honored to be featured on “What’s Your Story?” It was actually a goal of mine by the end of this year. The humorous part of that is What’s Your Story’s tagline is “Real Stories by Real People”. I cannot explain to you how funny I find it to see ZwebbyVille listed under that tagline!

As a Presidential Candidate, I will be asking for your vote many times over the next couple of years so let’s consider this a trial run. Please go to “What’s Your Story?” vote for ZwebbyVille and let’s see if the public opinion will justify the time, effort and speech-writing that this campaign will require.

Thank you very much to all who nominated me (I will make Cabinet Seats for ALL of you!),

Russ AKA ®Zman

Mayor of ZwebbyVille

For this special occasion I went around and around about what song to play today. I finally decided on the song that I have basically adopted as ZwebbyVille's Theme Song. I know it isn't the best music out there, but the words fit MSN Spaces so well that I felt I had to use it. Read these words and see if you think I'm right...

Theme Song from "Cheers"

Gary Portnoy

Making your way in the world today
Takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries
Sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came.
You want to be where you can see,
Our troubles are all the same.
You want to be where everybody knows your name.

You want to go where people know

That people are all the same.

You want to go where everybody knows your name.

Apparently, the voting machines for MSN are located in Florida... The site is still showing votes from last week and not allowing you to vote if you did then. Please check back here and I will update when MSN removes the hanging chads...

Update 12:00 EST

MSN Engineers have reset the chads so the voting is open!