blog.laylaness.com

Frustration abound!

I know this has been blogged about endlessly, but I'm going to throw another whiny diatribe on the pile.

I'm creating rounded corners for all of the boxes on the website I manage in my day job. Firefox works brilliantly. Internet Explorer 7, interestingly enough, is working. But wherefore, IE6? Where. Fore.

I'm not trying anything new and kamakaze. I'm using the simple 4-image and 4-divs formula. Every browser except IE6 likes it. No problems. It's cleaner and less poke-me-in-the-eye looking. But IE6 only works on 3 of 5 boxes. One of the boxes that it screws up displays one rounded corner. The fifth does nothing at all. Nothing!

Does anyone still use IE6? Does anyone still use IE? Why? Why do you want to torture web designers? IE isn't W3 compliant with JavaScript, let alone CSS. If I get one more ActiveX warning, I'm going to, I don't know, get really annoyed and blog about it.

Anyway, I've narrowed this problem down. IE6 isn't displaying my corner images. No dimensions have changed. It's a fixed-width box. Bottom-left is the only corner that's displaying the rounded image. For now, I'm off to quadruple check my code and see if I get any errors with the Firefox error log.

If you know what this bug is and have a fix, please don't hesitate to give me the answer.

The worst hour on television

I admit it - I'm a TV junkie. I live and die by the TiVo. Season Pass conflicts give me hives.

I'll also admit that I watch reality shows in particular: Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List, Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, Top Chef, Shear Genius... Pretty much anything Bravo wants to spoon-feed me.

Last night, I watched the most appalling, horrible, disgusting hour on television. It should come as no surprise that it was on E! (the only show I watch on that particular channel is The Soup). It was... Denise Richards: It's Complicated, followed by (sigh) Living Lohan.

Look, I'm ashamed, okay? I couldn't help it. I was out of TiVo, and there was nothing on. I suppose I could have turned it off, but there's not much else to do at 10pm on a Sunday night.

Denise Richards: It's Complicated (or, to borrow from Joel McHale, Denise Richards Colon It's Actually Really Stupid) is so, so, so bad. And it's not even so bad it's good. It's just awful. First, her nasal whine is enough to make me commiserate with the Sheen. Second, the episode I saw was full of her complaining that she's fat and needs to lose five pounds. Way to set a healthy example for your daughters, Denise! Third, she's vapid and has nothing of value to contribute to society.

The thing that got me most about this episode? She's being followed around by cameras for her reality show, yet she bitches out a papparazzo who follows her and her chick friends around Hawaii. "All I want is to have a nice time with my friends!", she whines (nasally).

Right. Right. Let's break this down: You have film crews for E! following you around constantly, which you even took your ex-husband to court for so you could show your two young kids on it; you're smearing your divorce all over the tabloids;  you were openly dating the not-yet-ex-husband of your alleged friend, which you also addressed in tabloid interviews; and the thing that you want most is to be left alone on a beach in Hawaii, as you're being filmed for your reality show, by one dude with a camera who probably won't even get enough cash from selling your pictures to make up for his time? Okay.

Living Lohan isn't much better. The nasal whines are two-fold - Dina and Ali Lohan whine about everything. I didn't even make it through the whole episode. I got irritated six minutes in when Ali starts whining about how she has to feel the songs that other people are writing for her, so she can believe in herself when she sings them. Are you frigging kidding me? I mean, really.

Between that and name-dropping Lindsay every fifteen seconds, I don't understand how this has any appeal. Lindsay herself refused to attach her name to it - and she was in I Know Who Killed Me.

Another One Crossed Off the Checklist

As part of my metamorphosis into the Me I Want to Be™, I made a list of things that I'd changed and now sort of regret. Although part of my life's philosophy is never to regret your actions, but treat them as learning experiences, there are a few things I wish I hadn't done. I've also made a list of things I've been too chicken to do, like going blonde (which I did about four months ago).

On Saturday, I got my nose pierced again. I'd had it done twice before, but both times I took it out; most recently because I was leaving University and probably couldn't get a job if I'd left it in. I'd decided against a retainer because I thought that would look weird. Anyway, I'm really glad I did it again, and no one even noticed.

Behold, the process:

Step 1: Regard hot, funny piercer with mild trepidation.

Step 2: Swab off make-up.

Step 3: Keep eyes closed while needle is in face.

Step 4: Consider flirting with hot, funny piercer while he is inserting jewelry; discount this idea as awkward.

Believably Billy Corgan

I've taken the liberty of bolding the parts that made me choke on my Diet Coke.

My Dear Friends,

Today is the greatest day you've ever known.

Seven years, seven months, and ten days ago, the clock struck midnight, 2000, and the world began turning faster. Back then, I disbanded the Smashing Pumpkins because the new millennium demanded it. A new age needed a new start—cleanliness and unity, not the confused, confusing wreck I let the band become.

We were once the most important band in the world, and everyone—me, you, Courtney Love—knew it. The Smashing Pumpkins drew the line between Black Sabbath, the Bee Gees, and the Cure, and that line caught a generation like a leash around a wayward puppy. We founded Alternative Nation, and the kids and advertisers flocked around. But because the band had become bloated, overbearing, headstrong, because it grew beyond my control, it had to die. I killed it before it killed me.

And now, after all those years of self-imposed obscurity, of forced poetry, of side projects mired in mediocrity and too many guitarists, I bring us, together, here, to the corner of Future Avenue and Now Street. This is our moment! This is our day! This is Zeitgeist! (That's "Spirit of the Age" in German. Trust me: I've read Hegel.)

This band has always been the headlight on the barreling locomotive of modern youth; with a title like Zeitgeist, nobody can argue. I brought back original Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain—recovered and reverent of yours truly, he's the epitome of a new leaf turned over—plus another chick bassist and some new guitar guy. Zeitgeist (Say it! It feels good!) arrives this week, in four different forms: The Best Buy version is different from the Target version is different from the iTunes version, which is different from everyone else's version. Most zeits would've settled for a single geist, but ours demands more marketing strategies, so I offer it four.

As for the music, the critics won't get it. They never have. My old fans—the ones whose lives were changed by Gish and Siamese Dream—won't get it. They will complain that the sound is too dense, too severe, too, yes, overbearing. But the New Generation is the one I'm speaking to, the one that needs to know that My Chemical Romance and Panic! At the Disco couldn't exist without me. Whether they want to know doesn't matter. This Zeitgeist is not consensual—it's here, whether you understand it or not.

Several weeks ago, I released "Tarantula" to prime the public for the coming onslaught. The song is the sound of one ego exploding (mine), the sound of an entire album in just one song. You'll like it because it has the same skyrocketing guitar riff as "Cherub Rock," and you liked "Cherub Rock" back in 1993. You still like it, because it is one of the best songs ever recorded. But now, instead of one guitar playing one riff, there are more—way more—guitars. And more riffs. It's awesome, in the original sense of the word. It might scare you.

Fear is the effect I'm going for. Fear and exhaustion. But "Tarantula" is not the scariest or most exhausting song on the album. That honor goes to "United States"—a triumphant teenage anthem that sounds like the closing solo of "War Pigs," refracted and stretched into nine minutes. Remember, I was subtle once: "Drown," from the Singles soundtrack, was haunting in its minimal, dissonant beauty. But the Zeitgeist has no time for subtlety, friends, and neither do you. Hence song titles like "United States" and "For God and Country" and "Pomp and Circumstance." Even more than you need more guitars, you need more meaning. And I bring it to you:

Dulcet tones whisper fast

Refuse your yearns, renounce the past

Rouse me soon, the end draws nigh

Whose side are you on

Your blood you cannot buy.

Revolution!

Revolution!

Revolution!

Yes! Zeitgeisty!

Every revolution needs a counterpoint, and that would be "Bring the Light," the one song with a discernable, singable hook, the one song that's remotely accessible. It's got a melody that burns with the same adolescent struggle as those Siamese Dream days. Naturally, it stands out: Hooks and singability are not really the zeitgeist. At least not this Zeitgeist.

Here is what you must understand: Nothing has changed since 1999, except my budget. And Pro Tools. I am still the same alt-rock messiah I was. You are still my teenage flock.

Trust me.

Your zero,

Billy Corgan

Source

So, wait, is there a revolution, or has nothing changed?