New Year, old obsession: in search of blogging consistency

New Year, new blog. And this first blog of 2023 is essentially an update on a blog from 2018 where I was dwelling on the horrible shock of discovering countless inconsistencies in my blog layouts going back years. It's happened again! This time it's right-justification on the text that's thrown me into an obsessive tailspin. Really, you're thinking. This idiot cares whether his boring blogs have justified margins or not? Yeah, fraid so. Anyway, I've spent most of the past three days trawling back through hundreds of blogs fixing this (ie un-justifying the text). Also, as I said in the 2018 blog, this obsessive project inevitably unearths other things - eg the fact that there are too many paragraph breaks (and generally too much empty white space in the posts); that despite my earlier efforts there are still undersized photos lurking around; or, irritatingly - but also seemingly unavoidably - there are old YouTube links that have been removed for copyright infringements; and also - in my particular case - dozens of old Podomatic links that no longer lead anywhere and even a few old posts that were formerly connected to Amnesty blogs from my now discontinued Amnesty blogging days. Hmm, it's a tricky business blogging for years like this.  Yeah, man, I know, I need to loosen up. Forget about inconsistencies in ancient (and largely unread) blog posts from 2011 and 2013. If only. Nope, it doesn't work like that. The Great Unjustifying project must continue. Working backwards, I've done 2022-2016, so I'm more than halfway through my - gulp - 800-odd blogs.

Massimo Girotti and Clara Calamai in Ossessione

When I did my very first post on this blog on 29 December 2010 (the product of having too much time on my hands one Christmas spent in Italy) it was done without the faintest idea of keeping it going for any length of time. I guess it was open-ended. Let's try a few and see what happpens, was probably my thought process. Now I'm a slave to the damned things. A captive of the obsessive need to keep recording and (pretty ineffectually) publicising my every thought about music, however dull, obscure, over-obvious, confused or just plain boring. Yeah, I'm like Giovanna in Luchino Visconti's Ossessione. Fatally attracted to the sulky handsome lure of er, the music blogger that came to live in our house. Ciao bella.