The Gilded King (part 1)
In the middle of every month, I went to visit a very powerful man in my kingdom. I knew he would eventually be a threat to me because he was the charismatic type and he had a seemingly endless supply of gold. He could afford to give the people free lunches while I could not. That said, I kind of liked him and his kitchens made the best pizza in town. Our relationship had been growing less cordial throughout the winter and when I went to his compound in March it was awkward if not strained.
I started to get fed up when I realized he was having me tailed throughout the building. Everywhere I went someone was subtly (or not so subtly) watching me. When I recognized one of my watchers as a girl whose family I had known for many years, I went to ask her what was going on.
"He has something special planned for you today, A Royal Challenge."
Oh God, I thought, here it comes. "So why doesn't he just come out and tell me, I prefer to get 'Royal Challenges' over as soon as possible."
"That's not his way, he is making preparations."
"Well it's mine, and since I'm still the royal one around here, why don't you just take me to him."
"He's by the pool."
So we started walking towards the pool, I with not a little dread. It was kind of a crappy pool as pools go, lots of trees, but the shade was in all the wrong places. It had a high and poorly hidden fence that was too close to the edge, leaving no good place for sun-bathing. When we got there, I noticed one other thing that would make it not the best place to spend a warming spring afternoon -- it seemed to be filled with molten gold.
part II >>
Take it Light Baby Strange
It was all, as they say, in the shoulder. A simpler time, when the rules of the game were clear cut: if you screw up, do it three more times. FOUR wrongs make a right in these parts. Beer and smoke, violins, tacos and electric guitars, set amongst the pubic regions of San Antonio, Texas. Speakers blew and heads fried at Wacky's, Taco Land, the Cameo, and other cosmic buttholes. We split the cash that the crack smoking club owners didn't steal with Coyote Dreams, the Intentions, and Evergreen. And most of all there was the warehouse. -- Rob Turknètt
I got a scan of this ancient (1994) Light Baby Strange flyer by email last night and couldn't resist posting it. It was made in the days of blown-up type, scissors, glue-sticks, and the glorious two-colored copier (which I still miss). What amazes me most about it is how little my design choices have changed. I still love courier for headings, borrow liberally from the works of others, have troubles staying between the lines, and am a sucker for recursion.
In case anyone wants to hear the musical genius that was L.B.S., this is an mp3 of Korina written by Elliott Seymour. Elliott sings (John Aselin back-ups), Dave drums, Rob and Charlie guitar, and I bass.
I
am a deeply superficial person.
I don't want it to be essentially the same--I want it to be exactly the same. Because the more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel. --Andy Warhol
In the continuing series of "colors ripped off from other people's paintings," I present the January tribute to Andy Warhol. Stylistically, this page also falls into the continuing experimental series of "subtly screw with browsers to the point of inaccessibility." If things lock-up for you or are completely illegible, email me and let me know.
The first experiment is attaching the same background image to the html
and body elements. One image scrolls and repeats
along the y-axis while the other is fixed and doesn't repeat. Unfortunately,
it doesn't seem to work at
all
in Internet
Explorer and only works in Mozilla if the images are the same.
Related to that is the continuing saga of getting internet explorer to support arbitrary fixed elements (menu right, title left). I'm using a couple of nasty little hacks to pull it off (* html with child selectors) but no javascript (at least not for that) or .hta's.
The javascript and conditional comments are actually a part of the third experiment -- alpha opacity. The partially opaque background of these entries is generated with a tiled png image in browsers that support alpha transparent images. But again, internet explorer couldn't handle it, so I was forced to simulate the effect using proprietary M$ filters.
Oh yeah, experiment #4 is that nasty floating thing to the right (left). Let's just say that I'm a sucker for recursion and had never used an object tag before. Hope it doesn't crash your browser.