thanks a lot, rss

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ever seen a picture where some guy's sitting there smiling for the camera, completely oblivious to the fact that one of his balls is dangling outta one leg of his shorts for all the world to see? well, now i know how he feels.

yesterday i published a post, came back later and decided it was lame, reworked it, re-published it, decided it was still lame (i mean, nobody really needs a discourse from me on levels of anonymity on the internet, do they?), and took it back to "draft" mode.

it's gone, right?

wrong--it may have disappeared from my actual blog but it's still out there all over the place; hell, i got a comment on it this morning.

and how can this be, you ask? well, unless you're as internet-dumb as i was up until about an hour ago, it's no mystery: it's all due to the magic of rss.

yeah, yeah, yeah, i know i should keep up with developments, but the truth is, i don't. i still read my blogs the old-fashioned way--i click over to each one every day, see if there's something new, and if not i move on to the next one. and while i was vaguely aware of rss and how it enabled folks to subscribe to various sites--and while i knew my blog was rss-subscribable--i hadn't really given much thought to the implications behind this technology.

until today, that is--when judi tried to comment on a post after i thought i had taken it down--and i decided it was time to set up a google reader account, subscribe to my own blog and see it the way many of you do.

and holy shit, was that a shock--seems that when you're rss-enabled and hit "publish," it really thinks you mean it, and you can't take it back.

see, i've always assumed that, unlike commenting, as an actual blogger i had an infinite number of do-overs; hell, i don't even really ever start to edit a piece until i've published it and read it over in finished form--that's when shit starts popping out at me that needs to be fixed. and then, compulsive perfectionist that i am, i'll go back and edit, re-publish, re-read and repeat the process indefinitely until i'm satisfied.

and now i'm thinking this must annoy the living fuck outta my subscribers if every time i re-publish a post it shows up on their rss as an update.

but the bigger problem to me is: i can't tell you how many times i've dashed something off and published it impulsively (i.e., drunkenly), only to read it over when better judgment returns and take it back to "draft" status--usually early in the a.m.--before anybody might possibly ever read it but me.

yeah--or so i thought until today.

what i found out scrolling through the rss-feed of my blog was, there's all kinds of shit out there that i never intended for anybody to see--including, for instance, this post (which i had taken down because it was too long day's journey into night for even this blog). but hell, it's out there, everybody's read it, so it's going back into the blog--along with yesterday's half-ass submission.

i haven't gone back any further yet to see what other atrocities from my past await me (i'm a little afraid to, actually--i'll pour a stiff one and do it tonight).

and please turn away while i tuck my balls back in, willya?