Won’t Complain Any More About Techie Things After This Post. Honestly, I’ve bored Myself With It And I’m Hard To Bore
Well, as you can see, no technical progress has been made although I have dropped a stone in weight and am suffering from dehydration. My sidebar remains slipped; my header and footer are yet squint.
What I have been doing for the last hour is trawling other people’s Wordpress sites with a stained overcoat and a cap in my hand crying “‘Ave pity on a poor blogger, miss!” “I cahn’t do blogging, see? And … my kiddies are stahrving … yeah, thassit! The kiddies are stahrving! Do it for the children, mister. Me? I can’t ‘elp myself, I’m a lost cause, but you wouldn’t see a pair o’ nippers go ‘ungry now wouldya? Mister? Miss?
I have, as you see, been solliciting shamelessly for a techie person to come and ‘elp, I mean help me. And now, for your pitying wonder, ladies and gentlemen, I present today, “Portrait of A Housewife Blogger Brought Low”. A matinee:
The following is part of a letter sent to another Wordpress blogger.
“I’m a a berk when it comes to ‘puters and stuff. Truthfully, I’m an enormous berkyberkyLuddite. ‘K? I said it. But I am also a berk who is mightily impressed with how you have got Wordpress to do the zippy things you have. And now a berk with an idea of how to somehow get somebody else to do it for me.
I live in default-template-land over at my site and would like to know if you have any clever friends who could help me out, with site design and the like. I would find someone myself but I’m not even sure I know what the hell I’m looking for and I’ve already searched the darkest corners of Google for them. What is the proper title, even, for elusive people such as these ? Lesser-spotted techietypes? Big-beaked whizpeeps? I can’t find anyone to help me and I will pay, like, money and everything.
Site-designers all seem to only work for businesses and my emails of enquiry have been met with the kind of silence only heard in deep-space or, question time at a slide-show entitled: “The Hidden Side of Middlesborough: Mildred and Bernard’s tour off-the-beaten-path. (Summer Hols. 1985)”
I am weary from tinkering late into the night only to accomplish the ensquinting of my header and footer, and the be-squinting of my eyes. (Everyone knows a woman’s thirties are supposed to be a time for avoiding wrinkle-forming activities) Do you know anyone who can help me?
I will open up all my files to anybody who will attempt this. I have nothing to hide and only the usual diseases so whoever is willing to take this on, they can be assured that I run a very clean site, my code is spotless, if muddled, and that they run no danger of infection of any kind. And they will get Cold. Hard. Cash. If I can buy myself out of a problem, by God, I will. It’s the early 21st century way after all.
My creative tide has ebbed for the day and, weary as I am of all the fruitless tinkering, I’m left high and dry with nothing to blog about but the folly and woe of blogging. So if you wouldn’t mind awfully, I am going to cut and paste large swathes of this email as today’s post. Pitiful.”
So was it written and, so have I blogged.
February 28th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Maybe that Harvard president was right.
February 28th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Dave, my beloved, I know for a fact that you are as html-illiterate as me, despite your polyglottedness in the other computer languages. Why am I working in the only language you don’t know? Why am I working with Wordpress, when everyone knows it is the tech-head-onlyest content management system in the galaxy?
None of this is doing anything for my ever multiplying wrinkles, you know. ‘Til death do we part you, YOU, David going to have to look at this face as time and blogging ravage it . For the sake of our marriage, one of us is going to have to learn html and it won’t be me. You KNOW I’m serious ‘cos I just called you David. Love and Botox etc.
March 1st, 2006 at 8:28 am
Brilliant. I love this post.
Particularly as it gives me hope that if I ever get around to transmogrifying myself into the kind of web developer that does jobs like this, people like you might actually pay me for it!
I could offer to take your money right now, but seeing as I don’t actually know what I’m doing, that would be siloly. And mean, and wrong, and anyway what I realy need is time, not money. Oooh, I know, I’ll do it for you if you pay me in weeks – how’s that?!
March 1st, 2006 at 1:08 pm
What’s a Berk? If I’m in the Berkshires, does that make me a Berk? Oh, such exotic words you know. I feel so dull and dimwitted and hopelessly American.
March 1st, 2006 at 8:02 pm
The best thing about being American is the hopeFULLness of the national character. It’s why I like living here. Hopelessly hopeful, the lot of you.
March 2nd, 2006 at 2:30 pm
But, how can you be American and loose a stone? I thought that was British speak?
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Welcome joeinvegas! Thank you for coming to visit pcb!
I am indeed of a British persuasion. A long time ago in the Western Isles of Scotland some representatives of Whosever Majesty it was came and asked the people if they wanted to be British. “Will we get tinned goods?” asked the people “For we have often heard of tinned goods and long for their tin goodness.” “Yes”, said Whosever Majesty’s representative. And so the Outer Hebrides were persuaded to become British. Prior to that we had been wild and howling and our clothes were dated compared to mainland fashions. Once the tinned goods arrived, we settled right down.
March 3rd, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Jenn: a berk is Cockney rhyming slang. Comes via Berkeley Hunt, I believe. Not generally used in the, er, original sense these days, more just as a word for idiot.
Maybe Zoe should rename her blog “My Boyfriend is a Berk” (well, he IS….)
March 3rd, 2006 at 2:20 pm
A Western Islander from Scotland, British or American? At what particular stage of your journey did you change from ‘being bent (/) to becoming upright*?’ Having spent a few years in the OH, I’m a little confused about nationality issues.
best wishes and blessed blogging be with you
Grandpa bear
* I think i recall reading this phrase in one of your earlier blogs but cannot lowcate it.