the unhelpfulness that is Blogger

So I'm trying to figure out a way to get my permalinks to behave. Taking the KimcheeGI's advice, I sent Blogger an email to this effect.

This is their reply:

Subj: Re: [#31535] problem with permalinks
Date: 1/26/2004 3:22:58 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: "Blogger Support" [blogger@trakken.com]
To: "Kevin Kim" [fiercebeating@dwarves.com]
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Please see our Knowledge Base article for further details about
permalinks:

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=119&topic=22

Sincerely,
Kimmy

Hey, thanks, Kimmy!

Here's what you get when you go to that link (NB: I've changed the brackets from angled to straight to make the HTML visible):

Question:

How do I create permanent links to my posts?

Answer:

Permalinks are "permanent links" to blog posts; they're one aspect of blogs that differentiate them from other forms of web content. Some good discussion of their history is over at plasticbag.org.

Permalinks are created in two steps. First, a unique identifier is applied to each post using an anchor tag, like this:
[a name="[$BlogItemNumber$]"] [/a]

(This should go somewhere in your post body. If you include it in the itemtitles section, your post will only get numbered if you specify a title.)

Second, you need to display the permalink for each post. This is usually done in the footer and near the author name:
[a href="[$BlogItemPermalinkURL$]" title="permanent link"]#[/a]

These tags are already present in Blogger's default templates, but could be useful if you're rolling your own.

So... uh... for those of us who're clueless... does the above contain the answer to my question about misbehaving permalinks? At first glance, the answer seems to be no. The final sentence, for example, tells me that Blogger already does what I want it to do. But obviously Blogger doesn't do what I want it to do, dammit.

I don't think Kimmy really took the time to click through the permalinks in my "Sacred and Profane" section to see what I was talking about in my email to Blogger. If I'm wrong, and the above contains the answer to all my problems, please feel free to clue me in, because right now I'm not getting it.

_