What a graceful, enjoyable read. I've always felt that all websites should be forced (by whom? how enforced?) to standardize the common-denominator functions (eg, help, contact, home, site map should all be located in the same place [eg, along the bottom], in the same order, in the same way [eg, all menu'd, or none of them] on every web page in the universe) and secondarily by site type (eg, why can't all stores of every kind standardize search, store locator, my account, contact us etc. in those same ways? and always put category-search [gifts, accessories, women's apparel etc.] in a dropdown menu on the left top [eg]?). It's a very minor but recurrent and universal waste of time to have to go roaming around all over the page to find such things, and it's often just plain hideous. For me at least, I'd rather have to menu/click (more than once, even, gasp!) through an organized, sensible hierarchy to find what I want (I'd even settle for that, even if not standardized), than wade through a morass of undifferentiated visual information (even buckets, let alone individual links). I just foldered all my 'desktop' iPad apps onto the main page and my heart rate declined perceptibly.

Blogs should be excepted, obviously.

Yup, just outed myself as a hypocritical fascist. (maybe there's no other kind) With a soupcon of OCD. Or I'm just really frustrated and tilting quixotically at (additional) things not under my control.