Sheesh . . .

If you want to be reminded that, despite everything, we are still in the infancy of the internet age, try modifying your Blogger blog to allow expandable posts that jump to the full text on a key word such as "continued . . .", so that readers fascinated by, say, the intricacies of street parking in Washington, D.C., can read all about it on a separate page, but those with less interest in the subject (freelance photojournalists in Bavaria, perhaps, to take one hypothetical example) can read the first few paragraphs, decide they are not interested, and be on their way to the post about my virtual heartthrob Vienna Teng.

I tried to make this change today because, you know, I try to be accomodating here. It's the least I can do.

I thought it would be a simple thing to fix, but soon I was down the rabbit hole, in a land of help pages and HTML code as frightening and inscrutable as any episode of H.R. Puffenstuff. There weren't any talking flutes, but it was almost as terrifying.

(Maybe this will reveal my Luddite tendencies, but the blogs devoted to computer code are at least amusing. In the main post, Code Wizard will say something like, "I've developed a fix to create expandable posts on Blogger, using CSS style sheets to modify the Beta layouts version," (at which point I'm already lost) and then, in the comments, Bat Girl will say, "Great, Wiz! But have you tried using a recursive betaflecker, to make the fix optional on each data post entry?" And then will follow about 150 comments that seem to reflect an intelligent, thoughtful, problem-solving discussion that would be helpful if I could understand any of it. I would laugh if the writing on these blogs wasn't so concise, and the comments so admirably to the point. It's like listening to brain surgeons. You might think it's funny they're speaking nonsense, but you can't laugh because, well, these are brain surgeons. Another thing: You never see posts on computer code blogs veer off into tangents and personal attacks, like they so quickly do on the political blogs. Make of this what you will.)

Anyway, you would also think it would be easy to explain how to make an expandable post on Blogger. I can get to the HMTL template of my blog and make changes to it. I actually know what a style sheet is. All that I need is a simple "find this code, add this, now find this code, now add this, boom, voila" type of thing.

I finally found a page that took this approach, on a blog titled, ominously, "Make Money on Your Blog." But the person who wrote the helpful instructions also wrote, as a conclusion: "This will direct people to your page and make money for your blog." I don't believe this, and it's not exactly why I wanted to break up the posts on my blog. And doesn't this last line sort of destroy the author's credibility? Because how could someone so misguided about the reason for making an expandable post be a reliable source?

But whatever. I made the change, and it worked. The problem was that the fix, which is apparently the standard fix on the Blogger site, puts the tag ("continued . . ." or, if you don't modify it yourself, the embarrassingly enthusiastic "Read more!") at the bottom of every single post.

Meaning that you, my readers (all four of you), would be led to believe that my one line posts directing you to my latest self-absorbed Nervous Breakdown essay were just teasers when, in fact, no, those posts are only one line long. This is not what we need, since I'm embarrassed enough to be writing those essays and directing people to them from here. Tricking you into twice reading my one-line post directing you to the essay I've written about MYSELF -- well, that's where I draw the line. Yes, I've drawn the line pretty far down the field, but still, that's where the line is for me.

This expandable post thing on Blogger must be a common problem, by the way. It would explain why you can find about 500 web pages devoted to the subject, and why Eric Spitznagel's posts on his blog, for example, are never broken up with jumps marked by key words.

The short of it is, I gave up. Until I figure this out, you'll just have to read every word of every post, or do a lot of scrolling down through material about street parking in D.C. and the frustrations of working with Bogger to get to the pocket book reviews and Vienna Teng videos.

By the way, this was meant to be a post comparing Gore Vidal's memoir "Palimpsest' to "The Education of Henry Adams" and reflecting, wistfully, perhaps, on the genre of detached comic memoirs of alienated children born into wealth and privilege.

Hopefully I'll get to that later today . . .