Black Motorcycle

Overheard While Bored

Surfing around the TV channels repeatedly two days ago, I ran across a preview for some kind of show, apparently about mechanics and fabricators who build their own cars and motorcycles. I paused only long enough to hear a participant named Fess growl out something like this:

"Well, all I know is, I plan to win. A lotta these people around here think that if you build a black motorcycle, it's jinxed, that it can't win a big contest like this one. I'm gonna set them wrong!"

Blink. Pause. I kept waiting for him to grin foolishly and add, "I mean, right!" Or, change it to "Set 'em straight?" But he never did.

I'm sorry to bring it up, but it just reminded me how some people born in America speak the language about as elegantly as a duck or a dog would speak it if they could be taught to vocalize and modulate properly.

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Jesus, the above post was hard to deliver today!

Now this loony analysis is longer than the actual post. When I first published it, it was scattered all across the page, back and forth, maintaining the small and large columns, but with the background colors going all the way across instead of staying stage left. This post would fill the right and left side of the screen, then finish, and the next post would do the same. The legitimate sidebar information didn't show up until all the posts had appeared. Etc. I stared and stared, feeling utterly crazy. WHAT could cause that! I studied every Blogger fuckup that's ever occurred to me. I couldn't remember anything quite like this. Besides I couldn't remember any change I'd just made other than adding the new post and it didn't look peculiar in any way. I made a copy of the post, deleted it, and republished it. The fuckup was still there. Thank you, Blogger, you're so sweet.

I couldn't think clearly. I began to think of how it'd be to just have to live with it. After all the bragging I've ever done (to some people) about my html prowess, I would be standing here naked and crippled for the rest of my goddamn blogging life! I looked at posts for the months of February—they were all right, a thing of interest, but that I still cannot explain to you. I went back into Blogger editing and examined the code of the previous post, Mean Mister Mustard. Nothing out of order at the top. I skipped the middle and checked the bottom. I noticed that the link to the song lyrics was incorrect, missing a closing quotation mark at the end of the URL in the link. I've had that cause a problem in the past, and indeed it was my problem. Oh, joy.

But here's the catch: That link was correctly expressed all during the day. I returned several times to check for comments and at least once I tested the link. The link either changed itself, was changed by a Gremlin, or my butterfingers are getting so bad that I can change the code without even being in an editing mode! Okay, I see what it was, sure, but how can I know what to do to avoid this kind of spontaneous deconstruction in the future if buggery and necromancy, not logic, is how things work in Bloggery!!! Damn you, Blogger, send me a complete User's Manual, please! But you probably don't have one because you keep changing how things work.

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