Please stand by

As dictionaries of common usage add all the terms incumbent to our shift from broadcast to cable/satellite to web as our primary information medium, no one seems to be saying much about the words and phrases that are becoming as arcane as "How's tricks, old socks?" Of which today's header is one: Does anyone "stand by" for online news? Texts? Facebook updates? A relic of an era in which someone literally had to stand by a transmitter/receiver or a teletype machine to get a needed bulletin or update, "please stand by" has less relevance now than "Lucky Strike: It's toasted." Same with "Stay tuned" -- although you can still see that imperative clause/cliche tacked on at the end of any number of op-ed pieces in our nation's finest newspapers and magazines...and blogs. (Last I checked, you can't really "tune" a computer, a cell phone, or an iPod.)

All this is just to apologize to the 1 1/2 of you who've checked this since last Wednesday. The computer I usually work on is informing me that someone on the server is jamming Google with queries, which is illegal, or something. And so I am currently without blogspot access there. (This is but the latest technological snafu that has cropped up in the process of setting up this site -- I suspect gremlins.) I do have the fallback computer, which is serving me well now, but the presence of Roo and Lumpy make time here a precious commodity. Hopefully (used correctly here, so don't even start), I'll be able to get the server problem figured out with some help in the next couple of days. Until then, we'll all have to settle for the soul of wit instead of its ponderous, unmanageable body.