You'll have to trust me on this. It was the greatest blog entry in the history of bloggery. What Brittany Spears is to bad parenting, this blog would have been to sports writing.
And now it's gone.
An account of the Cowboys Giants game that made Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" read like an excerpt from "Clifford the Big Red Dog". Vanished. Consumed by cruel fate and technical difficulties on the FOX Sports website.
It wasn't just that the greatest masterpiece since Da Vinci was laying around wondering what to do with that empty space in the basilica was gone. It was the callous, even flip way they broke it to me when I clicked on "post to blog".
"Whoops. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please check back."
OK, who says "Whoops"? We don't say whoops in blogging. We might say "bleep" or "blankety blank." Or "worthless no good blanker". But not "whoops". There's no whoops in blogging.
FOX. Put the helmet back on and get in the game. There are people working here. Crafting out little slices of life that future generations will gaze at in awe and wonderment (as in "aw bleep, I wonder why did anyone put that blankety blank on the web.") Call Terry Bradshaw in on overtime if you have to. Tell Howie Long you'll explain to him later how they make the robot dance. There are bigger things at stake.
The glitch must be stopped. The gremlins must not triumph.
It's bad enough that my entry vanished. What if it had been Lisa from USC? No Straight Talk From the Left Coast? I shudder to think of it. What if it had been Half Baked? (Well, it was sort of half baked). Or Carolyn T? What if this had been a blog essay of pictures of Brazilian supermodels? What if you had somehow managed to take out the entire Gerbil Sports Network?
Good grief, what if the FOX Funhouse had crashed?
Meanwhile, I leave you with this. My blog entry tonight would have made you laugh, would have made you cry, become a part of you. Reviewers would have written, "If you read only one blog entry this year, let it be this one." There was a description of Owens catching that 50 yard touchdown that people would be talking about for generations.
Now they'll never know.
Excuse me while I wipe away the tears, push "post to blog", and hope in the name of all that is bloggy that this uploads.
I'm sure your entry about the Giants-Cowboys game was great, but this was a pretty good substitute under the circumstances. I especially loved the Clifford-Tennyson comparison.
I usually write my entries out in Notepad first, but my most recent one was written in the post box. Looking back I took a pretty big risk in doing it that way.
Very frustrating. The problem is rampant, and I hope Fox addresses it soon! I've lost countless comments and a blog entry. Luckily, I save my blog entries on Word, but when it comes to comments, sometimes, I'll do them over, but other times, I wonder if it's really worth it if the result is going to be the same (I mean, who actually saves their comments on a word document?)
Approximately every other thing I try to submit results in a "Whoops", and that's no exaggeration.
And Dudski, when you say your post today would've been one for the ages, for some reason, I believe you.
I couldn't agree more. I tried to write on wordpad in advance but when you cut and paste then you have to go backscreen and line up all your HTML that doesn't match systems. Fox should be ashamed of themselves. Now let me save this comment in case it says opps. try again.
I just found that hitting BACKSPACE after a Whoops! brings me back to my amazing postings to the blogs of others. I don't know it it'll bring writings to a new blog back.
Hey Fox, can you invest in a couple new blade servers, please.
Every other entry gets Whoops!
This is like Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan. He does a little opium, falls asleep, has a vision of a poem, wakes up because he hears knock on the door. It's some stupid salesman or something, he's trying to remember the poem while the guy's going yadda-yadda-yadda. When the guy leaves all he gets down is 54 freaking lines!
I've started saving stuff as I post. Fox isn't as bad as some sites, like Hot Sweaty Biker Babes Want You!, which always crashes just as I type "my thighs were burning".
I have lost a lot of "great" material due to the fates of the technologcal world.
Usually my own computer problems.
I completely empathize, and then some.
But, in the long run, perhaps my posts that do get cyberspacified might actually last much longer than otherwise? Somewhere in the corner of the cyberuniverse instead of in my dad's basement in the MidWest?
I feel your pane. Thomas Payne.
Last edited by edclinch on November 11th at 6:57 PM.
I feel the blog pain. As I was fixing my sights on the destruction of Eli and the giants, I get a whoops.
I want to respond to all giant fans, for that matter, all you yankee's.
Eli"wish I was Peyton" Manning passer rating for the game 72.7 for his short carrer 74.2. My blind beagle has a better passer rating than that.
Tony "Glad I'm not Eli" Romo passer rating for the game 123.1, and for his short carrer 100.4.
Guess being a Manning doest endow you with the arm, smarts, and wit demonstrated by your older brother.
I love that giant fans are much like their congress shemale Hillary, they are full of hot air and when they lose you dont hear them. New Yorkers stand up be proud losing isnt the only thing, but its seems to be the only thing you are good at.
Now I am realistic when it comes to the boys, americas team.... I want them to win a super bowl and will bet they do, but I still think they have some growing to do, then we will be back to the Aikman dynasty.
I leave you New Yorkers with one final thought. Be men and woman, if you have enough balls to speak before the #### whipp'n at least have enough to admit that your team doesnt belong on the same field with AMERICAS TEAM..... GO BOYS..
Dusty-The whole HTML thing is way over my head. I've never figured out how to do what you describe. Maybe if I stopped posting long enough to read the instructions...
Husker-Thanks for the heads up, I'll have to try the backspace key next time. I've hit the back arrow and the title of the post is there but not the comments.
FloridaFlavor-Yes, we should all use Word and practice safe blogging. Wouldn't want to be spreading BTD's (blog transmitted diseases) all over the internet.
BayCityBlackCat-Another great line: "My blind beagle has a better passing rating than Eli Manning". I've got to check out your blog, that is a classic line.
The same thing has happened to me a number of times, but fortunately (or not I suppose, depending on your viewpoint) I write my posts first on blogger.com and then cut and paste them here, so I can always go back and recover my pearls of wisdom.
The whole situation reminds me of Mel Brooks's movie, "History of the World, Part 1" (I think that was it, anyway), when God gives Moses three tablets on the mountain and he comes back to the masses and says, "I bring you these fifteen...." and all of a sudden he drops one of the tablets and it smashes on the ground and he says, "Uh, ten....these TEN commandments...."
Yes this sucks. I now write my post on word then cut and paste. I tried to comment on Revs post yesterday and it kept coming up with technical diffeculties.
Dudski
It's great to know that a behemoth like Fox can suffer like the rest of us. But as they're probably losing valuable revenue in terms of lack of real advertizing being realized in terms of hits. It makes it all the more pleasing !
