In a little more than a week from now, this weblog will receive a makeover…and it may just be in time. The software I've been running it on has become hopelessly outdated and has started to malfunction in small ways. To upgrade it would involve at least as much labor as starting from scratch so I've designed a new site with different software (WordPress) and I've been testing it offline. I plan to switch it online around New Year's Eve, give or take a day. Prior to that, you may see odd things pop up here…well, let's say "odder than usual." Last night, in a semi-homophobic gesture, it decided to insert the letter "s" a couple of extra times in the post of the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles. That was not me effecting the lisp. It was the software. Honest.
The page design here will change a bit. On the date I switch over, the weblog will only go back for about ten days. Older postings will be viewable via a separate link but they may be offline for a few weeks before that part is configured.
I will warn you all in advance that the new site may not work well with real old browsers. In the past, I snapped to attention and tried to fix things when someone wrote in and said the page looked funny on Internet Explorer 2.0 or some browser of long-defunct origin. My new policy is that if it's okay on the current Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera, then any problems are on your end. I have one oft-complaining reader who seems determined to not take the two minutes it would take to upgrade what he's using. I think he's viewing this site on an Etch-a-Sketch.
One feature of the new page will involve me making a series of seemingly-impossible judgment calls and assigning categories to the posts here. This will enable you to search for only the messages about Comics, only the messages about Theater, only the messages about Laurel & Hardy, etc. The item you're reading at this moment will go into a category called Blogkeeping.
The new filing system will enable you to only read the messages about Current Events (e.g., politics) but it will not enable you to read everything but them unless you just search for every other category. I'm really tired of folks who can't cope with a page that contains an opinion with which they disagree — and this includes the Etch-a-Sketch guy — and it bothers them so much, they can't even move their eyes past it to the next item. I wonder how these people survive on an Internet where there are sites that compare George W. Bush to simians or seek to prove Barack Obama is a white guy from Kenya…or worse.