Comments | baxil: Ia! Ia! Yvette fhtagn!

baxil

Ia! Ia! Yvette fhtagn!

Jun 16, 2010 20:14

Let's say, hypothetically, that "web design" was one of the fundamental particles of the universe. This, ladies and gentlemen, is its antiparticle:

... Hang on, obligatory disclaimers.

( Read more... )

writing, roleplaying, infohazard, multimedia

Comments 21

tracerj June 17 2010, 04:04:22 UTC

Amazingly, Opera rendered it lickety-split without issue. You know, just sayin'. The great part is that it's easy to simply disable all the style info and real the text and realise that... well, given a different visual design, it's only a lousy site, not a soul-searing one.

baxil June 17 2010, 05:06:13 UTC

I've subsequently opened it up again with no problems, in both Firefox and Safari - I think it was a one-time glitch, possibly something set off by the Javascript (or an embed) and several weeks of rebootless browsing.

> Given a different visual design, it's only a lousy site

I don't know, that's kind of like saying "Without all the spelling and vocabulary errors, The Eye of Argon is only a lousy story." I think the whole thing needs to be taken as a package.

momentrabbit June 17 2010, 04:59:44 UTC

That's Da Vinci's 'Lady with an Ermine', I do believe.

baxil June 17 2010, 16:39:08 UTC

It looks like it's meant to be, sure. But it's not the original, and the way it was redrawn ... well ... I stand by my goat headed demon baby assessment.

(Regardless, thanks for the art education.)

dragonzuela June 17 2010, 05:06:22 UTC

Is it a real bridal shop? Is it a surrealist artist promoting themselves? I'm so confused.

I was going to link you to the website of a professor I know, but unfortunately it looks like she finally had it redesigned for the 21st century. Black background, excessive animated GIFs, scrolling text, jpegs that changed when you rolled over them. Bad enough that it looked like 1995 threw up in your web browser, but worse that she actually kept it that way for a couple years after she was featured on a National Geographic TV special.

baxil June 17 2010, 17:33:38 UTC

It's that sort of retro early-Internet anti-aesthetic that caused someone to create The Geocities-izer.

(The comment has been removed)

baxil June 17 2010, 17:41:34 UTC

The source code insanity is probably an artifact of this:

WYSIWYG editors tend to produce that sort of garbage behind the façade.

circuit_four June 17 2010, 08:57:29 UTC

This is an ARG. I am absolutely, Comic Book Guy certain this is an ARG. Why am I so certain?

Baxil, sweetie, because I have to be. I couldn't go on living in a universe wherein a page like this could come to exist through natural and unwitting human endeavor. And I'm not talking about self-destruction -- I mean, I would find myself less able to maintain the basic metaphysical requirements of being a living sentient extant being. I can not exist in the same universe as an unironic Yvette's.

baxil June 17 2010, 17:16:34 UTC

Believe me, I sympathize, but I truly urge you to also consider the Necronomicon theory. This would also make it a product of deliberate incoherence rather than unwitting failure; I guess at that point the distinction between culture-jamming and mere malevolence isn't as big a deal.

Seriously, I read through Aydin's Death Letter !! *~ this morning and dear lord does the Lovecraft just drip off the page. "Something went wrong in the woods near Whitefish Point." "I think it infected me with something. I think it got inside me some way. I haven't been feeling myself and that recurring nightmare of yours has become my burden as well." "The Ancient Ones." "The desert dwelling tribes have legends which tell of another world ..." etc ( ... )

baxil June 17 2010, 17:27:23 UTC

Also, 15 Baxil Points to the first person to register an account at Unfiction and start a thread discussing how they're "stuck at Aydin's Death Letter" and "can't figure out the next location." This is something we need to prod the pattern-seeking parts of the Internet Hivemind toward.