How the Blag was Done

Finding the right layout for this place has been an aggravation, not in the least because of my own self-imposed desire to deviate from the standard template that commands of the eye, “Look here!  This garbage is just like everything else! Say FIRST in my comment threads!  Click on my google ads!”

And, yeah, I’d like for that to be just subtly implied hereabouts, I don’t want to wantonly ruin my carefully pruned mystique.  And my google ads are coming soon, so I don’t even want to get into that until I’m banging on your door at 3am begging for clicks.  Gird your loins now.

One of the biggest draws for upgrading to a wordpress powered, paid-for domain is the much greater control afforded over the design and richness of the site.   I presently enjoy absolutely none of these advantages.  I was fairly pleased with my 3 column, magazine style ghoul for a couple of days there, it handled nicely.  And then a handful of my friends came upon it, and they were a-feared.  They turned their faces from it, and my body trembled with the sudden and terrible clarity that I had lashed myself to the eldritch geometry of a secret, radiant abomination.

It was not well liked.  That was the general consensus; a return to a more traditional layout has given me some respite, and I can now turn toward the knitting together of my immortal, shimmering soul.  The graphic above is not mine, you should know, but neither is it the default iconography that comes affixed to this free template as a default.  I count this as a spiritual victory, and maybe you like it too.  I was torn between the moody shot of a house, the moody shot of a chair with a long shadow at twilight, and the moody shot of a tree on a hill with the moon behind it.  You would not believe how hard it is to find a compelling depiction of a white hand shaking a black hand nowadays.  I mean, don’t even get me started.

Hmf!  I’m not quite content with this stylistic oasis, though it will do for now.  What I’d really like is to take up a design like this, this, or this.  This treads the line of good taste, but comes in just barely on the side of minimalism that appeals to me.  The opposite of this thing’s vector, I think, would be these, which are appalling.

I can just barely envision the sort of Californian grandmother hipster gardener socialite those themes are supposed to appeal to.  She has her bluetooth  headset voice-type her thoughts concerning the new Coldplay album into her pink Macbook while she has sketches out the plans for her organic zen garden on some vegetarian paper in henna.

Also her blog is much, much more popular than mine.