Facebook is wonderful. Through that I can get all sorts of entertaining things to comment on.
Today my friend Qi Peng -- why he's my friend I don't know, but then I don't why almost anyone is my friend -- Qi Peng posts a link to William Powhida's blog, who is linking to Buck Naked's blog...and I'm already tired of explaining this. Shorter version: There's this blog called How's My Dealing? which apparently is supposed to be an obnoxious, truth-telling, badly informed, very brave blog about galleries and dealers in the art world. There's a Deathwatch on what galleries are in danger of closing -- or we wish would close already? -- and all kinds of other breathlessly important things to art and artists.
Sounds great! Just one problem: I CAN'T READ THE DAMNED THING. It's like the evil horrid malnourished spawn of late-1990s Wired layout. The only thing missing is the BLINK tag and that's probably because Blogger sends a hit squad out to your location if you try it. Any time anyone uses a different color for every letter in a sentence you know you're in trouble. It's like when I got one of those multicolor pens back in grade school and wrote all my headings in four different inks for a week. And when the anonymous blogger isn't writing in all different colors, the text is black on dark gray -- news flash, that's pretty much impossible to read.
And it's not just the layout and colors, which are bad enough, but the style, which is, like, hyper Page Six smacked into a brick wall. What the hell does "Gallerists Respond: Pete Surace has commented on RARE, granted bonus O and renewed benefit of the doubt" even mean? It's not English, it's not any kind of language. It makes those blind items -- "Who was that dapper English actor with a hit movie in theaters vomiting into the sink with at Club Wazoo?" -- look like Shakespeare.
I think I learned my lesson on anonymous bloggers back when Edna was still active. I'm going to share that lesson with you now: Put your real name to it, you coward, or shut the fuck up.
I don't think shaming them will make anonymous bloggers leave their real names. I recently got an obtuse death threat on my blog and the person not only left their real name but a hyperlink to their blog. Turns out they are some religious nut, stained glass maker from Texas. I found that far scarier than some anonymous potshot.
Also, my real name isn't attached to my blog because I want to feel free to say whatever the fuck I want to and I might have to look for work sometime in the future, I do have to work full time for a living after all, and I don't need prospective employers looking up my cartoons. After all, I like nudity, crudity, and foul language.
You can have your reasons. Everyone else has excuses.
The two things I have attacked over at EW's blog, is anonymity and abuse of the rules of grammar. These things are probably the biggest problems with the whole blogging thing. Whether I agree with someone or not I would rather hear real opinions and not sugar coated, politically correct, smoke being blown up people's asses. Maybe that is why the whole online networking thing hasn't worked for me.
"Sugar-coated smoke being blown up people's asses" -- can we mix anything else into that metaphor or do you think it's full?You're right, though. I probably wouldn't have listed them but you've got it: Anonymity and Abuse of Grammar are the big problems with blogs. The third of the Trinity, however, is Ignorance.
See also: John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
Its funny that Penny Arcade would put that up, since they're a flawless example of the same phenomenon.
What's mildly amusing, too, is when I went to read up (again) on the Penny Arcade-Harlan Ellison fight -- which is what I think of any time anyone mentions Penny Arcade -- I found a short column on it which, at the end, links to that very same cartoon.
I love Harlan Ellison. "Pay the fucking writer!"
That blog's funky graphics are way better this crappy blog. It's got a retro undesigned look as opposed to direct cheesy.
Can you read mine? Yes? Then my design's fine. "How's My Dealing" isn't retro, it's stupid. I know retro. I was there. I did retro when it was contemporary. That ain't it.
You have clouds as a background image and a really rough drawing of someones back. Come on. Hows my dealing looks better and even if you have to work to get info, it gets a million more hits then this thing. long live buck naked.
Excuse me if I don't post for another five minutes or so. I'm going to have to take some time healing myself after that incisive criticism.
The layout and design of "How's My Dealing" could not be worse than it is. The color scheme makes it unreadable. When does something begin and end? The indexing was not thought through. It is atrocious. Wow it gets a lot of hits! Who gives a shit. Anonymous idiots are anonymous for a reason.
the google ad at the top of this thing is a travesty. Have you earned any money from it? NO. I got rid of mine a long time ago. I was amused by their topicality though. That was the thing. As far as shutting the fuck up, fuck that noise. I will be getting louder and louder all year, anonymously and not anonymously, whatever.
the sky is ok, I would change the color/tint/shade differently rather than making it so dingy - maybe incorporate the words "NYCART" in the image and and use a negative margin to move the HTML text out of sight for accessibility while maintaining SEO juice. I dont know how to escape html in here but put this code in a div or H1 - style{margin-left:-99999999 bg-image:("yourimageURL/img.png");} and wrap the div/h1 around your H1 or something like that.
That tip might be retro though. Blogger has an option to use an image as your header by default I used a transparent PNG, which isnt compatible with Netscape 1-5 or IE 1-6 for transparency I'm guessing, but I don't give a shit it looks fine in Firefox.
WOrdPress looks like the way to go for Content Management as far as I'm concerned.
You're welcome.
Hey, Zip, you realize this post is almost exactly a year old, right? I'm not even sure How's My Dealing is still putting up new content. It's still impossible to tell for sure but nothing there looks new to me.
It's important to stick around, I've decided. Buh-bye, all you bloggers who seemed so important and who have quit since I started!
I've been mulling over a site redesign. I hate doing that because it eats up my life for several days as I wrestle with CSS. There are a lot of things I'm not thrilled about here. The navigation is less than optimal, for example. By the way, you don't need to give me HTML pointers, Zip: I'm pretty nearly an expert and have been since 1993. What I am not is a graphic designer. We all have our limitations.
I tried WordPress but couldn't get it to import my old Blogger blog. I was forced to switch when Google/Blogger shut down access to my Blooger blog for no reason and wouldn't restore it. So I took my ball and went home. I feel bad for anyone caught like that who doesn't have their own space, time and expertise to put up their own. Anyhow, when I switched I needed something that would automagically import all my old content and after several test runs with various systems Movable Type finally managed it. It's not perfect but it pretty much does what I need it to do.
As far as Google ads, I have in fact made money from them. Not so much here but from one of my other sites. So far this month I've made $1.03 from this site alone. Whoo hoo! Another six months and I can stop at Starbucks!