Worst Websites: A Review

For one of my design classes, I had to find 3 really bad websites and write an analysis on them.

Enjoy?

{Best Clips}
I don't know how Senior Scribe Publications can get off with using the word "best" in any context on this site. Clearly the creator of the site either has never looked at Best Clips online, or he or she is permanently stationed 12 feet away from the screen. 24 pt. is not conducive to anything more than three or four words on a browser. And what kind of English-interested blogger misspells "arrangements" and puts line breaks in such dastardly locations?

The colors are very natural. Natural, that is, if you are used to seeing bloody leprechauns rolling around on eggshells on a bright, sunny day. Baby blue, St. Patty's green, Maroon, and eggshell white? That just doesn't happen, people.

What really gets me is the quote at the bottom, (there is more scrolling going on at this site than at the Library of Alexandria):
"It's Our Choice!
Each of us was born with two ends:
One to sit on and the other to think with.
Success or failure in life depends on which we use the most—
heads we win, tails we lose!"

Senior Scribe Pub, your tail is showing.


{Dancing Baby—Burning Pixel Productions}

Ron K Lussier. Apparently, this man brought us the dancing baby animation, one of the earliest internet phenomena. The website is a travesty. “High quality graphics, animation and multimedia production for the digital world”? I am skeptic.

Upon further examination of the content:

Frowny face because his MIDI music won’t play. A tough blow.
“Vector Graphics: I had done some experiments with a web technology called ‘Scalable Vector Graphics’ a few years ago”

I am beginning to suspect that this website is slightly out of tune with the rest of what we people like to refer to as “the present.”

I can’t decide which aspect is the most depressing. The layout? (Grid systems are a foreign enigma to Mr. Lussier.) The obnoxious number and placement of ads? The fact that the flash on the site is a loop of less than 2 seconds? The four or five different grays that do not match? (that is something you have to just see for yourself.)

Lussier even mentions Opera! On his SUPER AWESOME FLASH! and “VECTOR” PAGE!

Tears are beginning to form in my eyes. The pixels aren’t the only thing burning.


{ChildCare Action Project}

Here it is, the obligatory unbearable Christian website.

As you may already suspect, it is covered in pixellated images created, as far as I can tell, in MS Paint (Windows 1.0). The colors are retina-scarring red, chartreuse, cyan, robin’s egg blue, and royal blue, with a hint of tan and wolf gray. Half of these colors are brilliantly displayed in a flash film reel banner.

No, you did not transport back in time. It is still 2009, Michael Jackson is dead. He is not cruising the Caribbean with Macaulay Culkin.

And then there’s the buttons.

No, whatever you do, do not scroll to the bottom. You will find some very terrifying things down there. One, you will realize that the webmaster has been online at least once in the last year to renew the copyright date (though not much else). But at the very end of the abyss, to your horror, you will find not only a flash animation of a spinning gilded cross, but two more links. Yes, those are links to the “top rated” Christian websites. If you have heart problems, are susceptible to liver problems, or do not want to spend the rest of your life crying yourself to sleep, do not visit those sites, and especially do not visit any of the sites featured. Nothing is safe; nothing is sacred.

We're Engaged!

Thomas Willard and I are getting married! I am so excited to be engaged to my best friend!

When Girls Watch Scary Movies (poem)

We aren’t as afraid as you think we are,
clinging onto your shirtsleeves as we peer
over your shoulder, eyes squeezed, jaws tightened
as a group of oblivious teenagers fumble around in the dark.
We pretend that the monster or unshaven criminal
might suddenly jump from the screen, that
we are the prey and you, our defender. But while you set yourself
in marble, seemingly unfazed, we are closing our eyes, picturing
a full moon on a clear summer evening, werewolves
replaced by Romeo, Saint George slaying for a princess and honor,
Indy with a whip blazing in hand, Tom Hanks on the top
of the Empire State Building.

You see us not looking and pull us in closer to console us from
this thunderous nightmare, but now rain is splashing
onto our eyelashes, and we are soaked
in Austen’s old England, riding on the backs
of gentlemen’s horses, while a far off voice is assuring us
none of it is real.

Eulogy in Yellow (Revision)

At eighteen I stand in an Irish abbey
crumbled by centuries of forgetfulness,
believing in monks whose cadences
rose like sacrificial smoke.
And in Monasterboice, high crosses project
heavenward. People gape like infant birds
as though the sky will feed them.
But I walk through the stone forest of the cemetery,
reading letters engraved for those who are gone.

A daffodil illuminated by grey marble, brighter
than the sun swaddled in clouds. Two names
written on its headstone—
Mark, Luke. I stop to scan their story:
One lived August to June, it says,
his brother was born an angel.

I wonder if their hair was red, if Mark ever
walked or called for mother. These boys
would have quarreled had they lived,
pelted rocks at neighborhood sheep,
fought over toys, forgotten their chores,
caught a fever from swimming in spring.
But now they are quietly sharing this plot,
this stone, this flower. Luke is five years dead.

The grass is thick over the grave,
tourist-pressed. School uniforms are
flooding into the cemetery, but the accents
are muted by this yellow-petaled trumpet
placed by ghost or mother,
playing an Irish lullaby.

I Thought Not of Insignificance

[revision of "Resisting Inertia"]

Broke from my summer reading
to lay out on the lawn which drew me
from the air conditioning and couch. Now
I am on my back, terrain:
a plateau of skin, hair, and 100 percent cotton.

But when I look behind the clouds
to the universe invisible, I suddenly remember
that the earth is hurling through space
at 67,000 miles an hour, is turning on its axis at a thousand miles
each hour, and I sink my fingers into the grass,
lodge myself into the dirt, straining to feel the rotation.

And then I, twenty years old, wonder if each of us
is always dizzy from all that spinning,
and if feelings of nausea
are epiphanies in disguise.

Photos: Up North (Vol 3)

Photos: Up North (Vol 2)