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September 09, 2005
When Design Attacks
 | Currently Reading Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition By Rogers Cadenhead see related |
Exciting news: smartypants Tamara (Death Before Onions) will betransferring her blog to hissycat.com. How fantastic. I'm flattered.
I don't sleep anymore. I cry and I code (no connection). CSS is the best/worst thing to happen to me. I'm obsessed. I'm still tentative about messing with any of the non-CSS MT template files. I tried to, as the kids say, "plug in" a couple of extremely modest, teeny-weeny little scripts, but when I loaded the page the scripts not only failed to execute anything but also made my formatting go ape-shit. I'm thinking I must have plugged them into the wrong jack, or outlet, or whatever the fuck I'm supposed to call the place where they plug into.
I want to get my page icon todisplay in the url bar, but I can't. And other difficulties, middlinto moderate in size.
The hissycat blog, at the very least, should launch by the end of this weekend. Additional pages will follow. Nowthat I have a working schema of the site, I can do fun, design-relatedtasks. Like playing with pictures of bunnies and ducks. Like making pretty patterns. Like offending and horrifying Alex with my opposite-of-minimalist "design"-- chock full of lacy crap and cobbled together clutter. Everything I touch looks like the frumpy, faded tschatzke of a packrat-spinster-librarian who lives alone, feeding offof books, public radio, and obscure scholarly/ literary journals, and talking to the three-legged cat she named after a character in Ulysses.I'm trying to excercise restraint, though. I don't want to be precious and, like a good bookworm spinster nerd, my first priority is readability.
The elevator in Alex's apartment building was done in a wallpaper that,frankly, is horrifying. Even to me, and I'm, like, the least effeminate gay man� I know. The pattern is so obnoxious and bizarre and aggresive. Alex has perfected a backwards walk into the elevator with his eyes half-closed and cast down so as to avoid the blight on his vision. It gives you motion sickness just to look at it. I started to feel like the heroine of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story. Before long, I felt compelled to enact the final scene of The Yellow Wallpaper.
It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision! . . .there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?
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Posted by hissycat at September 9, 2005 02:02 PM
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Visit Gwyneth_Paltrow's Xanga Site!
Since I've already posted one letter to the editor, I've posted another letter that I found hilarious. You may not agree, but take a look.
'Character Studies'
To the Editor:
I can remember when Tina Brown was in charge of The New Yorker and a writer named Mark Singer interviewed me for a profile. He was depressed. I was thinking, O.K., expect the worst. Not only was Tina Brown dragging The New Yorker to a new low, this writer was drowning in his own misery, which could only put me in a skeptical mood regarding the outcome of their combined interest in me. Misery begets misery, and they were a perfect example of this credo.
Jeff MacGregor, the reviewer of "Character Studies," a collection of Singer's New Yorker profiles (Aug. 21), including the one about me, writes poorly. His painterly turn with nasturtiums sounds like a junior high school yearbook entry. Maybe he and Mark Singer belong together. Some people cast shadows, and other people choose to live in those shadows. To each his own. They are entitled to their choices.
Most writers want to be successful. Some writers even want to be good writers. I've read John Updike, I've read Orhan Pamuk, I've read Philip Roth. When Mark Singer enters their league, maybe I'll read one of his books. But it will be a long time � he was not born with great writing ability. Until then, maybe he should concentrate on finding his own "lonely component" and then try to develop himself into a worldclass writer, as futile as that may be, instead of having to write about remarkable people who are clearly outside of his realm.
I've been a best-selling author for close to 20 years. Whether you like it or not, facts are facts. The highly respected Joe Queenan mentioned in his article "Ghosts in the Machine" (March 20) that I had produced "a steady stream of classics" with "stylistic seamlessness" and that the "voice" of my books remained noticeably constant to the point of being an "astonishing achievement." This was high praise coming from an accomplished writer. From losers like Jeff MacGregor, whom I have never met, or Mark Singer, I do not do nearly as well. But I'll gladly take Joe Queenan over Singer and MacGregor any day of the week � it's a simple thing called talent!
I have no doubt that Singer's and MacGregor's books will do badly � they just don't have what it takes. Maybe someday they'll astonish us by writing something of consequence.
DONALD TRUMP
New York
Posted by: Gwyneth_Paltrow at September 16, 2005 04:53 PM
Posted by: Gwyneth_Paltrow at September 16, 2005 04:54 PM
Ha ha ha. That letter is hilarious.
Actually when I first skimmed my eyes over what you'd posted, I was confused-- I thought you were sending me a letter you wrote and then got to the signed name "Donald Trump" Which was funny, too.
Did you see that the original article by Queenan that Trump invokes is an article about ghost writers? Yes. And this is the beginning of the paragraph Trump quotes from:
One of the few "authors" who have succeeded in avoiding the pitfalls that increasingly ensnare ghostwritees is Donald Trump.Amazing, I know. So Trump should have written that he's been a best-selling "author"-- not author-- for years.
Gwyneth darling, can I ask as a favor that you post your comments on blog.hissycat.com? I want to eventually phase (sp?) out this xanga. I've already copied all the xanga content over to the new site, but I haven't found a program that will let me grab the comments.
And don't worry, there's no need to disclose your identity. I've enabled the comments board to accept from anyone. Just sign your name Gwyneth, or something. Thanks.
And, really: thank you for the letter. I mean, wow.
Best,
Oed/ Joanna/ Hissycat
Posted by: Oed (aka hissycat) at September 16, 2005 04:58 PM
i have the same love/hate with css. But, I do it all day long for my jobby-job, so I cant hate it too much.
that was my favorite story in high school.. I remember having all these conspiracy theories about the people that kept her in the room... but I cant remember what they are.
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