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February 10, 2004

Sans Sans Serif

I have this post-it note attached to the corner of my iBook that reads:

<i>italic</i>

This Post-It note, it makes me feel like my mom. God knows I love my moms, but I'll be the first to tell you, I'm not all that interested in having my husband set the alarm clock for me for the rest of my life because of my fear of buttons.

The last straw for me and my technological illiteracy was, however, the other day when Special Ed got out the keys and revved up his dinosaurial Hewlett Packard laptop. It sputtered and shimmied for a while, then settled on down to its steady idling mode: "whhhhhrrrrrrreeeeeewhhhhhhrrrrrrreeeee." (We took it to Midas once, trying to imitate to the mechanics the knocks and pings that thing makes, but they just said "Listen you two loons, how many times do we have to tell you, we don't fix computers here, we fix cars!" To which we replied, "But look at this thing! It's a sweet low-rider! They don't make 'em like this anymore. All we want is to be able to take a ride around the block in our ghetto cruiser! Can't you do something?") So Ed revs it up to show me this little formatting bug he always sees when he visits my site from work, on one of the federal government's PC lemons.

And oh god! Horror of Horrors! The site looks awful! Did you even know there was a place on the internet where they still used Serif fonts? I had to avert my eyes from all those sharp little feet shooting into space off the ends of my beautiful babies, Arial, Geneva, and Verdana. I felt just like Mischa Barton did when she left her cushy life up in the hills of Orange County to go to Chino with Benjamin MacKenzie. Except this time, it was me living the privileged life on Apple Hill and poor Special Ed was left duking it out with the toughs— who probably don't even know what sans serif means—down in the valley of Internet Explorer 4 for PCs. Chino is grim, my friends; in Chino you just aren't shielded from the cold, hard facts of how profoundly unattractively-designed this world that we live in is.

This whole terror-filled affair really brought me to realize that I don't even like how things look in Orange County/Apple Hill. This site looks so clunky and spread out to me, even from my perch above all the rest. I want more from life, I decided. I felt like Alannis Morissette after her trip to Tibet. You oughta know, my eyes are now open.

But isn't it ironic? because here I arrive at yet another confession. Not only am I completely technologically illiterate, I can't design for shit. Sure I have a talent for appreciating good design—sort of like the way Mischa Barton probably appreciates her Marc Jacobs wardrobe. But I think it's safe to say, Mischa Barton isn't hand-crafting those cute, oversized plastic buttons for her shrunken, puff-sleeved blazers.

Against all these odds, however, I decided to buy a book. About HTML and CSS. And it's currently MAKING ME A CRAZY PERSON. When I move from a standing position to a sitting position, I mentally envision a <p> or <br />. When I ask Special Ed to move over on the couch cuz mama wants to stretch out, I'm wondering "how many pixels should he shift over?" When I decide to wear the pink top, as I'm pulling it over my head I'm thinking {shirt-color: #FEEDEA}.

So I'm not sure exactly how much better off I am than I was with the pathetic little Post-It notes. But, god willing, in a few weeks, I will have something that in a way, kind of looks the way I sort of want it to. Almost. And also, god willing, I will never again use Mischa Barton to illustrate my emotional life.

February 10, 2004 |

Comments

Zoot

If it is ANY consolation, you are already a dozen steps ahead of me. Wait, thats not much of a consolation. Okay - how about the fact that in my family we all refer to "pulling an Oliver" when we are about to lose it over something.

There - THAT should make you feel better about the Mischa Barton thing.

Posted by: Zoot | February 13, 2004 at 12:27 PM

Veeg

It gets better, honestly.

signed,
dreamed about trying to set up a wardrobe rotation using CSS (and dammit, I WISH I could get that to work in real life).

Posted by: Veeg | February 16, 2004 at 04:39 PM

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