The youtube seems to be working this time. That's the drive to and then the four mile hike yesterday in Mohican State Park, photography, as always, by Earthgirl, I'm the lard in the United hat. I've no doubt operator error causes 51% or more of my grief with Google products, but the Youtube that came up as private yesterday is properly coded for public even though it doesn't work, and as I type this post Blooger backside won't open in Firefox but will in Chrome. (Today being Good Friday, the beginning of a three-day weekend in which readership will drop precipitously from almost nobody to hardly anyone, I indulge the bleggalgaze). I've been screaming all week about the inability to cut-and-paste into Blooger template, long poems - I've neither the time or desire to type long poems. I can no longer change anything in this blog's template because the Apply to Template button is dead, not margins or color or font or, most frustratingly, the size of the blog title, it's driving me fucking nuts, and I am not alone: hundreds, if not more, have complained of the same problem, Blooger Help Forum is full of inquiries and complaints, not a single one addressed by a Google employee. I suspect it would take a Google engineer upwards of two minutes to fix the problem. I'm genuinely curious whether Google doesn't give enough of a fuck to know about the problem or Google knows about the problem and doesn't give a fuck. Google is killing Google Reader, which many use and like, because Google doesn't give a fuck, so I suspect Google knows about the dead Apply to Template button and doesn't give a fuck. I started with blooger in 2003, moved to typepad because blooger pissed me off, moved back to blooger (here) for no greater reason than access to a larger audience and the self-updating blogrolls. I created a site in wordpress but won't ask anyone to move because I want the largest audience for this shitty vanity project I can garner plus I'm lazy, I love the self-updating blogrolls, I use them as bookmarks, it's how I know when you've updated your shitty vanity blog too. I expect Google to disable them at some near point in the future, in which case I will still not leave blooger because regardless blooger brings the most eyes to this shitty blog. Fine metaphors abound. I am the lard in the Google trap.
- So much for detoxing.
- Eating last night in a restaurant overlooking the Mt Vernon Wal-Mart and Mt Vernon JC Penneys, I said, I don't know how these places stay in business, the JC Penney parking lot is empty, the Wal-Mart parking lot 3/4ths as empty as I remember, and serendipitously this morning I find this and this on Wal-Mart.
- Fracking, he says, minutes after turning up the gas heat in the B&B room.
- On being a problem.
- Left Side of the Aisle.
- I've never said I was a libertarian.
- Exceptions R Us.
- Normal.
- I missed news of this fire, though I've hiked through there and wondered what happened.
- Glenmont!
- Please forgive me if I lack outrage at Amazon buying Goodreads. I understand those that are outraged, but I've only so many hours, so many windmills, so much outrage.
- New Doctorow novel in 2014. I've read most of Doctorow, or at least those written before the turn of the century and one or two since, struggle to recall a single thing about one of them. Liked them; nothing stuck.
- Age.
- Coetzee, for those of you who do.
TEACHING THE APE TO WRITE POEMS
James Tate
They didn't have much trouble
teaching the ape to write poems:
first they strapped him to into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand
(the paper had already been nailed down).
The Dr Bluespire leaned over his shoulder
and whispered into his ear:
"You look like a god sitting there.
Why don't you try writing something?"
