Bellowing about Blogger

I do understand the ire. My complaint with the new Blogger is not that it’s new. It’s the fact that it’s new and largely unimproved, with changes that were not at all intuitive.

 

Even though this blog is in WordPress, most of the other blogs I write or co-write are on Blogger. I stayed in Old Blogger as long as possible – when I briefly switched, about two months ago, I admit to being a tad confused, and switched back almost immediately – but now, all the blogs have the New Blogger board.

My intern at work was having fits. For everything she wrote, there were no page breaks. So I finally sat down and actually looked at the post settings, on the right of the screen. The bottom button gives one the option to either add page breaks – tiresome and tedious, and the default setting – or Press ENTER for line breaks, which is what I had always done. It was my major problem besides the Post Settings box seeming to jump to the left and right, opposite whatever direction I pointed the cursor; still annoying. But not enough to mention. But that Send Feedback button in the bottom right of the screen – is there any way to get RID OF IT?

Oh, and someone else was having difficulty I was not, which was getting to the editing page of the posts.

So I was humored by the fact that SamuraiFrog was complaining that people were complaining about Blogger; terribly meta. I was amused because I hadn’t seen any complaints at that point. THEN Ken Levine expressed his displease with Blogger (and Facebook, and rightly so); I did, though, solved one of his frustrations, and he thanked me in the comments. Dustbury cites Roberta X’s disdain. Demeur got so ticked off that he gave Blogger the middle finger and started a WordPress blog.

I do understand the ire. My complaint with the new Blogger is not that it’s new. It’s the fact that it’s new and largely unimproved, with changes that were not at all intuitive.

Something that REALLY annoys me on the Internet are those lists where you have to click on a dozen or more pages to get to “the Answer”. One of them Jaquandor pointed to, the ranking of Stephen King’s books. At least the slideshow goes five books at a time, but there seems to be no book at all in 2nd place.

Now this a good and proper thing to do. That Texts from Hillary page has hung it up.

“As far as memes go – it has gone as far as it can go. Is it really possible to top a submission from the Secretary herself? No. But then when you get to text with her in real life – it’s just over. At least for us. But we have no doubt it will live on with all of you on the Internet.”

 

An American Need

Listening to the podcast of Arthur@AmeriNZ recently. He noted that Rachel Maddow of MSNBC apologized to US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for calling him Bernie. Arthur, an American now living in New Zealand was amused/bemused by this apology. In his adopted nation, the prime minister is first among equals, and is referred to by the first name; the same tends to be true in the UK and in other countries that used to be called the British Commonwealth.

So what do they have that the United States doesn’t have?

They have a queen. Queen Elizabeth II, or her representative.

Whereas the United States, the anti-monarchical nation, has a much formal structure for addressing its leaders, “Mr. President,” and the like.

I had to laugh when Michelle Obama, speaking about Hillary, referred to her as “Senator, er, Secretary Clinton — almost said, President Clinton.” Whereas the UK, NZ, Australia use up their formality quotient on royalty.

Like John Oliver, the Senior British Person on the Daily Show noted a couple of weeks back, “the Brits have actual royalty, which is ‘why we can treat our political leaders like the disposable bureaucrats that they are.'”

So it’s obvious: the United States needs royalty.

Seriously, I thought that Ronald Reagan should have been king. For reasons I don’t need to get into, I was not crazy about his politics. At the same time, I recognized the positive impact his optimism had on certain segments of the populace. I decided around 1984 that I did not want him as President, but that he would be great as monarch. He said warm and fuzzy things about “morning in America”; we could feel good about ourselves without him having to have real power that could turn into Iran contra or the like.

So who should be our royal now? I’m not sure. Maybe Queen of All Media Oprah Winfrey. Perhaps a popular Olympiad from the most recent games. Or the mirror ball winner on Dancing with the Stars.

It’d be like king or queen of the prom. We can get all pomp and circumstancy with a royal. Then Rachel Maddow can call senator Sanders Bernie, like, he told her, everyone else does.

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