I can't help feeling that anything I would write about September 11th is nothing more than self-indulgent soliloquy. Please consider my lack of posts on this matter my own form of vigil or "moment of silence." It is out of respect for those who have died and out of love for my closest friends who have helped me through the past few days that I refuse to spill my guts on this silly webpage.

The only advice I can give is this; if you feel the need to help, donate money or buy stock in an American company, do your part to end ignorance and hate, and don't act defeated.

Personally, I was rooting for Akzidez Grotesk Super, a fine Helvetica replacement, which I used on the nav bar above... Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys

That's me and my best friend, Mary-Noelle Dana at the Knitting Factory last fall sometime... She says that people can't help but feel joy upon seeing the photo, which I thought was rather poetic and sweet.

So far, only one angry response to last week's rant about bad, also-ran web design. That's pretty good, if you ask me. And since that respondent had a rather poor command of the English language, and tended to focus his defence on the OK-it's-not-THAT-bad Holodeck73 site, it didn't bug me too much.

Speaking of bad English - check this out. The fact that he also addresses it to the Nobel Prize selection committee is the icing on that particular cake. Thanks to Kramer for the link.

In an effort to decrease my overall snobbishness, I've been to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Rat Race, both of which I would have shunned mere months ago, but both of which caused me to laugh out loud despite my brain telling me that I was in the process of losing valuable synaptic connections. While I could not viably characterize either of those flicks as "good," they did, nonetheless, have their finer points. And just so I didn't feel like a total idiot, I also caught the incredibly well-acted, wonderfully twisted, and certainly brainier, Ghost World.

If you haven't yet read Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, even though you've "heard about it" or even purchased it in an effort to up your hipster quotient when friends come around to gape at your bookshelves, then you, my friend, are missing out on one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, in my never-very-humble opinion. Completely tragic and harrowing, but somehow completely uplifting and funny. And as an allegory for life run amok, it stands tall. Rumor has it that Tim Burton has optioned it for a possible movie treatment. We can only hope he doesn't fuck it up, like his last few movies...

Got bored. Redesigned the site. Figured I should post something witty to go along with the new digs. But, as it often happens, I'm not feeling too witty, so I think I'll rant a bit. This one would fall in to the "Just quit it" catagory...

In preparation for this re-tooling, I looked around at what's going on in the web "design" world. Let me tell you, it's bleak and disheartening, and that's about as positive a summation as I can give.

Seems that a couple of years ago, everybody started checking out sites like the beautiful if unfathomable and trite designgraphik and the venerable if complicated surfstation. Then, all of the sudden, any twit with a Macromedia suite, time to surf and a penchant for snipped-off box corners is calling themselves a designer and spitting out glorified Favorites lists. Like this one, and this one, oh, and this one, too. Each site comes complete with shrunk-to-unreadable type "treatments," gratuitous use of model airplane decal graphics, exploded and angular 3D rendered "architectural" elements, and the requisite links to other sites that look just like them. And if you're really lucky, you'll get an endless slew of Flash "experiments" that pop up in new windows and prove just how much time these folks have on their hands, since no real company or firm would ever hire them to spit out that amateurish tripe.

Now I'm not claiming that my site is anything to write home about, and for sure, there are a few sites out there that showcase some honest talent. The very popular k10k (which is currently on hiatus) manages to be beautiful, functional, and cutting-edge. And although it's often guilty of some of the aforementioned crimes, kiiroi.nu is a good way to waste some time on a slow Sunday without having to worry that you've got the latest of the latest browsers and plug-ins.

I guess a little credit is due to cats who attempt, however vainly, to push web design in a new direction. I mean, at least they're not kin to that utilitarian 2-colors-and-no-gfx troll Jakob Nielson, who preaches weekly to a stunningly large audience about why you should buy his horribly designed book and pay him scads of money to speak to your corporation's IT department, much like that idiot on TV who wears the jacket with all the question marks and screams (very loudly for 3 a.m.) about all the money the government is just aching to GIVE YOU TO START YOUR OWN BUSINESS (if you'll just buy his book).

But I find myself in agreement with ol' Jakob N. on a few things; first and foremost that Flash is not for designing websites. It's for animating stuff. Exclusive Flash usage is the red Porsche for the shallow and balding 50-year-old inside each of those designers who insist that it's the greatest thing since the transparent .gif. And clipping one corner off all your single-pixel-bordered boxes and shouting "props" to your classmates does not make for a solid web experience.

Then again, I guess that ranting on and on about silly shit like this doesn't really swell the hit counter, either...

The point is this; 90% of people who use the web don't give a crap about how many layers you had to use in ImageReady to get the screen cluttered enough to render your site "kewl." Hell, most folks just figured out that e-mail isn't magic and that the mouse isn't a foot pedal to control the volume of the porn DVD they're watching on their got-it-three-Christmases-ago Presario screen. And as for the other 10% - it's very likely that they're designers themselves, but highly unlikely that they'll hire you simply because your site got a shout-out on designiskinky.

Just a media list update for today... I'm tapped out after sending out my Bakery Division email missive. But since Blogger seems to be fully operational once again, I'm moving its link to a more obvious spot on my toolbar so that I'm more frequently tempted to spew some stuff here. Plus, I'm thinking that the next time you stop by here, I'll have everything redesigned...

"Crikey! Where has davebias been? Has he nothing to say for himself? Has the 'blogging fad grown a bit too popular for his desperately-seeking-new-stuff mentality? How can he leave us hanging on that obviously bitter and staid posting of the McSweeney's link almost two months ago?!?"

Or so I've been told...

If you're coming here as a recruiter or headhunter or other person willing to place me in an insanely great-paying job, please allow me to smooth my persona for a second and adjust my necktie, and spit-smooth my bushy eyebrows. Gad, and I really should have shaved... So, now, anyway, like I was saying, I'm looking to place myself in a win-win situation with a successful, forward thinking, high-powered design firm as an Art or Creative Director. I feel my skills are best suited to a collaborative environment and one, of course, that is based on respect of the creative process, and integrity in the work environment. Playstation2's at every cubicle couldn't hurt either. Because, you know, by the time I get a job, that new Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 is going to be out.

Right. So you (the mythic recruiter) would probably like to actually see some of my work. Which is a request that I'd LOVE to be able to pony-up on, but as it turns out, I've been pretty busy and really need an editor to put a "book" together for me. It's hard for me to choose, see, and I've done a BUNCH of stuff over the past 6 years. Oh, did I mention that six years' experience part. SIX. For real... Anyway, so you can start here and then I'll work on getting a bunch of stuff I've done recently into the mix... And you can click on the tab above to see some of the websites I've designed and coded.

As for the rest of you... I'm really gonna try to have more things to say. It's just that I usually SAY them to whomever's standing in front of me at the time. Actually, I'm working on having more stuff to SHARE and less to SAY. I'm told that humans are way more into the former than the latter. You live? You learn.

Although I'm not married, or, yet, middle-aged, and even though I no longer work in an office full of people who feel the need to express insincere cheeriness, I still feel as if this Tom Spoth cat has stolen pages from my journal... Memoirs of a Guy Who Cannot Tolerate Instances of Slightly Insincere Cheeriness in His Everyday Activities

Let me tell you something folks. Life is pretty difficult when you fall in love 432 times a week. I don't know what's happened to me since I've been holed up here in single-employee-office-land, but when I leave my apartment and get into a conversation with a female, it just happens. It's not ALL that weird to me because I think that I'm generally a loving person, and there's nothing I love more than a good conversation with someone attentive to my need to converse. And I'm nothing if not a lover of diversity, so I can often find attractive, or even admirable, traits in the most anyone. But my internal need to show affection has come unfocused in recent years, spraying the love omnidirectionally, so to speak, and the minute I let my guard down and commence with the bantering, I can't seem to stop at small-talk... Before I really realize it, I'm talking about my childhood and asking personal questions about her job and eye-locking and generally doing my best stalker/obsessor. Oh, and my latest gag - fishing for an age...

The biggest problem is that I really do connect with people in general. I understand people. I know what they're thinking, because I've thought it. I know what they won't say, because I don't want to say it either. I know what they do when no one's looking because I do all of those things, too. I'm not psychic, just hard to surprise.

And it seems that with the opposite sex, this works totally against me. That's why I consider it a problem. The thin veneer of social acceptibility (my mom used to call it "cooth") is so transparent to me that I have trouble maintaining a distance. Or maybe it's one of those "can't-see-the-forest-for-the-trees" kind of things. Maybe those 432 women fall in love with me, too, and I just can't tell...

All I can say is, "Speak up!"