JULY 11-12, 2000. NEW YORK.AND LONDON
an EXCHANGE of OPINIONS

You may have noticed, dear viewer, that from time to time over the past week, the site's look has changed considerably. Once a plain, pristine white background was in place to ease the eyes and make the text more legible. This site, if you are into magozine-style sites, was parallaled on McSweeney's.net, whose motto is "no design."

However, our Tech Department, and I am using this term pejoratively since our Tech Department is one-half of us, that being Tony and Steve, has decided that the colors Cornflower Blue and Daisy Yellow are more appropriate, distinct, and indeed more aestheticaly pleasing than the "tyranny of white".

So we are having a feud. The Tech guy is changing the site daily from London which is six hours ahead of the time here in New York. Then I change it back to the dreaded white as the day begins and as a result you may be seeing different things at different hours. Rest assured that this conflict will likely not be fully resolved as both sides tend to remain bitter and unbending towards the other.

You have a chance to weigh in. Email rivative@aol.com and tell us if you like Blue & Yellow, or White, or prefer an entirely different background color. Thank you and have a pleasant day.

-- The Editor N Chief

Dear Newly Appointed Dictator,

You're so threatened by my color scheme you call me the tech guy? tell them the guy who does all the art changed it, fucker. remember? the design guy? or is that you? Mr. copy mcSweenys, if they use white we use white. Grow some originality. grow up a little? i even helped you with your design when it sucked ass. the tech guy is somebody at our host service.

Anyway, you're a good editor, but when did you become N Chief? Lets see if you have the balls to leave this up. Let's hear it for responsible editing. Say no to another copycat text on white site. Open yourself up to the blue. Wouldn't you rather read a comic book than a text book?

--The Art Guy, and supposedly equal co-editor before tony cracked up this morning.

Dear Art Guy,

What I meant to say is that you are a converted Techie. But seeing as you are so proud of your wonderful creations I will indulge your fantasies and call you "The Art Guy" without turning crimson in laughter.

Truly, we all certainly appreciate Steve's work on the animations and funny drawings, don't we readers and viewers?

Now this copying of McSweeneys we discussed and agreed to do. That was our goal from day one and now he wants to get rid of the white background. Dear viewer and Art Guy, I beg of you to send FIVE examples of a text site with a background color. I will gladly produce FIVE-HUNDRED in repsonse. And all these sites are not copycat nor are they un-original. In fact their content differs as much as Crank and The American Legion do.

The origin of cheap-looking background colors, mister Art-Guy-Bohemian-Luddite-ShitThrower, comes from the very FIRST homemade websites when dipshit Unix geeks at Universisty of Illinois or Virgina Tech or Buttfuck Midwest College U put up their stupid pages dedicated to their family, their cats, and their geeky hobbies. ALL these pages had some dumb background color because it was DIFFERENT. Now, its just retarded. But since you never went through this phase of web development, having first logged on in 1997, you wouldn't know.

Now tell me this as well: would you want an uncompromising artist type designing your site? Or would you want a designer? Steve, are you an artist? or a designer? There's a difference and you want to have it both ways. I'm not an artist and never have claimed to be. That's why I can see and appreciate differences in design. Do you want a failed artist to be your art dealer? Fuck no. That's why you are not the designer of this site. Tell you what -- you can have a choice. You make the design choices, I'll do the artwork and then we can be safely ass-backwards and a definite failure and you can finally be content to have dragged another one of your projects to the point of no return.

-- Tony, Designer & Editor N Chief

Dear Tony with the impressive titles,

That's OK. I already agreed the site can be your color when you cried and said we couldn't be friends anymore unless the text was on white like everybody else (The Tear-ranny of white, remember?). It only went back to blue because you're a lousy designer and forgot to center the logo. Didn't want you embarassed down at the "I'm all that" club.

Sure you'll want to get the last word in again to lay yet another far-fetched spin on this. Try and make it as long winded and defensive as the last one, ok? Might I suggest more insults and another character assasination? And let's hear more of your impressive history of conformity. And how about "white is not a color." Haven't heard that one yet today.

the Tech guy

Dear Steve,

It's about time you said something that is cogent and thoughtful instead of your meandering complaints and self-justified reasoning. You are slandering me, of course, as I never shed a tear for you or your circus colors.

But "Mr I Know About Design" why have you used three font styles in this last response? Do you think that is good design? Do you know how to use fonts in design? You start with courier, in blue. OK, that is fine, it draws attention to your response. Then you continue on with the italicized courier in black, perhaps to match my choice? However, in the end you revert to the original font choice that you used in your first error-ridden screed (I will refrain from counting the copyediting mistakes) which was "default." Add in the Arial text from that rant and you have a record FIVE font variations in two paragraphs. Very impressive, Steve.

I take it back. You are a designer. A very, very bad one who breaks all the rules because he doesn't know what the rules are. Poo poo on you.

With your complete disregard for text variations, it's a darn good thing we are not on a Unix server because all those capital letter choices could really screw us up!

-- Tony, Site King, Designer, Editor N Chief