Only one person will read this post, and you know who you are

Well, I don’t think much of his timing, considering that I’m up to here in Bump (rooms are slipping from my hands, there’s not enough housing, a couple of random people have gone ballistic on me and threatened my cats, and it’s only Tuesday), but it is always nice to hear from Herman Melville, my contact at ROTFL. Printing his note in its entirety will save time for me to on with things Bumpianic.

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Dear Mr. Menick:

How am I? You are fine.

I have been promoted again, and now have the title of Chief Information Officer, or CIO. My CIO responsibilities here at WTF include IT, CSS, HTML, FUBAR and GNSTDLTBB. In other words, I am now in charge of the PCB website, and while it chagrins me to say so, or fills me with chagrin, or puts a chagrin on my face—I’m not sure which is the correct phrase—I am not happy with your comments about the new design of our website. Please understand that the website is entirely my bambino, as they say in Italian IT departments. I am the one who calls the shots on it. It is the way it is because that’s the way I like it. Perhaps if I explain it to you in detail, you will understand it better.

First, we have specifically decided to only use a couple of photographs in the header. In the past we shuffled through our vast library of pictures so as to embarrass virtually everybody in the debate community. We know specifically that nothing incensed you as much as seeing your own grumpy visage gracing our home page, and that it would ruin your day for weeks. Because of the threat of lawsuits, blended with a fear of the unknown, we have decided that using the same ugly mugs over and over again is a better idea. And, of course, it allows us to save money on having to design a logo. Not that we wish you to see this as an editorial comment, but we do not want to sink to the level of something as crude as public domain dinosaur clipart. We have higher aspirations, but at the moment, we can only afford to aspire, as compared to actually doing something. But isn’t greatness measured by aspirations as well as accomplishments? Where would Jerry Springer be today, for instance, without aspirations? And without a mean dip on the dance floor, I might add.

Secondly, in the past we listed the news entries, for which we pay Mr. Crux the going rate of $5000 apiece, in a continuing column on the left. As a reader you could go back in time for decades (or at least 20 entries) scrolling down to find where you left off since your last visit. This approach, which is known in the website trade as “normal,” or, sometimes, “good,” was not the one for me! Our approach, a couple of entries at the top, and then a list of scumpty-eighty-ump unintelligible headlines on the right, serves two important functions. First, it renders the entries incomprehensible, and second, it keeps anyone from reading them. The past dies the minute it is no longer the present. This does seem a more valuable approach to Mr. Crux’s hard work, and I’m sure you’ll agree that having the information disappear as quickly as possible makes a lot more sense than allowing people easy access to it in a meaningful fashion. On your Quackean website, where you just post so that anyone can easily go back in time if they are so inclined, in logical order, most readers find themselves so confused as to what’s where that they immediately call the consumer hotlines of their computer manufacturers to demand a complete refund. We have learned a valuable lesson from this.

Thirdlyish, we do feel that it makes sense to put the navigation tools below the fold where no one can see them, and to make them so complex that no one knows what they are for. Most websites put their navigation at the top, where people are expecting it. But this is simply playing into cultural expectations, bowing to the semiotics of the website experience. There is much analysis of this in the readily available Critical Surfer Theory literature. We here at ATT may not support postmodernism in our debate rounds, but we infect it into our daily lives everywhere else. We suggest you do the same.

Fourthmost, we too have no idea what those two champs, Jed Nfl and Larry California, are selling, and why they take up so much space selling it. Nonetheless, they are making money hand over fist for us, and we have no intentions of either moving them, shrinking them, or explaining them. To do so would shake our economic underpinnings to the very root!

So, while ordinarily we feel that you are useful in your way, for once you are completely in the desert, or at sea, or up a tree, depending on how you like to put it. As you can see, everything on our website is there for a reason, even if the reason is irrational. And since, as you know, the site now loads as slowly as Mr. Crux’s left foot (if you’ll allow me to insert one of those telling metaphors that always seem to elude you, Mr. Knowitall), you can only applaud our technological prowess.

Which is all due to me,
Your obdt srvt,

Herman Melville
WTF CIO