B is for Bitching 'n Blogging

How was the first day of A to Z for you? Good? Yeah? WELL, if you must know, MINE SUCKED.

Hey, I've been down this A to Z road before and usually it's a happy, frenetic time of visiting and yapping and following new blogs. You might say the challenge is all about fellowship and goodwill and visiting and shite, but YOU'D BE WRONG. It's all about collecting new heads for the "Join This Site" box. The more heads the better. We're like fecking Amazon headhunters trolling for new shrunks to go with our fava beans and chianti.

No matter how dorky a blog is, I donate my own shrunken head to every Join This Site box I come across. It's what you do. You go trick or treating to someone else's blog and instead of getting a treat, you leave a treat. Your shrunken head. That way bloggers build their audience and everyone's happy. Honestly, they probably don't give a crap if I ever come back – they just want head(s).

If I really like a new blog, I'll add it to my blogroll. That way I'm more likely to drop by in the future and see what's going on. But even if the blog is about hamsters (not that there's anything wrong with hamsters, I just don't like the way they poop in your hand), or video (gak) games (I'm not a 21-year-old boy-man, sorry), even if I find it obnoxious and gross, I still leave my happy head behind as a parting gift.

Yesterday I set out with my bag of Cathy Olliffe-Webster shrunken heads in hand, ready to populate the bloggy world with my black and white face (I'm nothing if not arty) and what do I find? I CAN'T FOLLOW ANYBODY. Google Friend Connect would not work. I was like, WTF?

So I asked my bloggy friend JoJo Smartie Pants, who knows everything in the universe, and she said the fecking Google Friend Connect has been busticated for a few weeks. Seriously? Doesn't Google know that the A to Z Challenge is the biggest blogfest in the WORLD? And it's BUSTED???

Well. Isn't that special ...

JoJo told me to eat a Xanax or four, and then she pointed me towards Klahanie's blog post which helpfully provided a work-around for the following debacle. He pointed out that you have to be patient for this to work – eventually it will work, most of the time, but sometimes it won't, because, well who knows, you might as well ask why the earth is flat – but patience is something I don't have a lot of. It took me four or five tries to follow people yesterday. It was sooo frustrating! If you actually see my black and white shrunken head on your blog, consider yourself fortunate. I really WORKED to give you that head.

So.

Anyone else having this bloody problem with ol' Googlio?

(And if you tell me to go to Wordpress I shall SPIT.)