Typical Day

I've had this little blogger problem in the past.  It's raised its horns again, and I can't remember how I solved it.

Perhaps I never did, but it went away.

Trying to paste text to the blogger dialogue box from Word, I'm getting a white background at my posts again--for no apparent reason that I'm aware of.  I've either accidentally created a snag or one has been created for me via my "third-party" interface--if that's what you call it.

There is a way to rectify the situation in HTML for each post, but it is soooooo tedious...

Not feeling it at the moment.  Maybe next time.

Truth is computers and modern tech have been good for me in hindsight. A little bit. Blogs are great, any half-baked idea carries a little muster--oft-times very little, indeed--but I sometimes miss the good old days. When it was you, a sheet of paper, and a typewriter. Carbon paper if you were smart.

Wear out a ribbon?  Buy another.  Carbon paper, Whiteout and ribbons--parts of a gone world, except to aficionados and old geniuses.

I had a history professor--a tenured beast--at Portland State as recently as a decade ago who refused to use a computer. He wouldn't have minded if you submitted your papers in typescript or a legible scrawl as long as your thesis and argument made sense. The last of a breed, I tell you.

Things were more difficult in the old days, but that is because you couldn't throw a picture into your text and create something with a duality of effect. You tended to waste paper.  Crumpled balls of it scattered at your feet.  You had to be good.  Really good.  Now you can be your own lousy editor and let the little (or big) stuff slide because you're your own incompetent master. You shouldn't, but you do because in fact you are a sloth hanging upside down in a tree.

If you wanted to say something about neocolonialism in the old days for instance, you couldn't do this:

Or this:

You'd have to sit and write it out using words. That's hard enough, but then you had to show it to a Mother Superior or above.  Or, if you were a painter or collage artist, you'd work it out in other terms.

Excruciating, I tell you! Beyond beyond for all but a handful.

Anyway, I'm happy to have an outlet in these times.  There are days when it feels right to be doing this.  On others you wonder: why bother?


TS