55 Comments on “Why, Yes, I Am Fiddling With the Background Again”

1. I know those swirls…

   [hums “Vincent,” exiting stage left.]

2. Bring back the green with the winter berries…

3. The winter berries were actually fall crabapples.

4. Ooh, pretty! I like it.

5. Okay… So I’ve got the season and the fruit wrong. Idea #2: How about using some of Athena’s illustrations from her stories?

6. Woah. There’s titties on my screen.

   Not that I’m complaining, mind.

   K

7. Actually, anonymous, I was originally going to post a piece of Athena’s artwork as the background. And I still might, later.

8. Sorry, John, but…ugh.

9. I kind of like it. I also kind of dislike it.

10. I kind of like it.

11. Well, it is at night, and for some reason I feel, I don’t know, starry? But not comety, not yet.

12. Man, you are just having the hardest time with this web design thing.

13. Stop it. I’m enjoying myself, is what it is.

14. I notice you also seem to have acquired one of those funky-fresh “favorite icon” thingies, complete with an massive, ominous “W”.

15. Yikes! Backgrounds that don’t scroll with the page give me a headache.

16. I like the font for “Whatever”, but this background makes me feel ….. all swirly inside…and..(Ohm, Owmp)…. I held it in. No worries.

17. Did something else just change again?…Like two seconds ago?

18. Stand Still, Dammit!

19. Engh, van gock is kind of… done. How about Ahtena Scalzi? Or something from one of your cover? Something less… generic…

20. Van Gogh is generic?

21. I could debate him at length with the art history minor – oh, and someone else doing my work so I could sleep enough to think straight. I just think VVG is… common, popular, cliched perhaps? I mean, frigging beautiful too and starry night just makes me frak out with it kineticism and beauty.

    How about skulls? Who doesn’t love skulls? No one’s doing much with skulls these days. Except goths. Metalheads. Rappers. Christians. Buddhists.

22. I wouldn’t say generic, but “The Starry Night” has become somewhat clichè.

23. I think Chang, who gets something for having an Art Minor, means it really isn’t germane. Anybody could have Brother, Lend Me Your Ear on their blog or website.

    Skulls are cool. Buddhists do amazing things with skulls. You could also find skulls and possibly flayed cats if you looked at the late Soviet Polish Poster artists.

24. Flayed cats: teh ewwwww.

    I tell you I like the color scheme, perhaps not the VVG. The blue is nice, but then I gravitate towards that (I am also Dutch like VVG. Perhaps crazy, too). I see you returning to something celestial with this, just not in the VVG mode. Also, the deco font is killing me. It’s done. Cliched. Please don’t hate a chang because he’s right.

25. I like that the background doesn’t move. It makes it so I’m not glancing around looking for borders and sharp edges.
    But it is your site, and if I hate what you do with it, I can wait a week and it’ll probably change.

26. Well, we’ve had Photorealist, Deco, monochrome and, now, Impressionist.

    H’mm.

    How about 60s-style psychedelic day-glo? Some old Fillmore West concert posters, now; that oughta drive your 30-and-under readers totally mad.

27. I do like the stationary aspect of it, too. I gotta say.

    And it’s your site (sight) and WTF do I know anyway.

28. Well, not that you care what I think, but you should use the Chinese OMW cover for a while.

    ITZ TEH AWSOME!

29. Word.

    G;noghjt. I go sleepybye now.

    day i got cookie…

30. The colors are pretty good, but you have to see Vincent’s stuff in person. It is truely mind blowing and CMYK and RGB just can’t grasp the energy of the original. And opposite of VVG, but another example of having to see the things in person, is Wyeth. I saw a exhibition at the Canton Museum. The paintings were gorgeous and rich. The catalog sucked mighty-ly.

    CaseyL, I have a whole book of those posters. I had to knock an old lady down to get it (last copy at the RnR HoF in Cleveland). It was worth it. I love that type and form.

31. I have been using some of your site CSS as and example for re-designing a blog of my own, and all this “background changing” is making it harder to relate the CSS back to the appearance. Stay on target. I mean, I bet you never thought of all the possible effects of your background changing, did you? :)

32. I quite like this one.

33. It’s interesting, in a good way. I like that the background doesn’t move, and I love the title font.

34. Can I request Elvis on black velvet for the next iteration of the Whatever The Heck Is That?

    (This isn’t meant to badmouth Vincent, and I have a couple of Van Gogh prints around my own house, but I’m just suddenly craving Elvis.)

35. Go with the Van Gogh.It reminds me of your stories.(Which is a good.)

36. I quite like it, but I guess one could get tired of it quite soon…

37. Thank god you got rid of the black/maroon with two white stripes. It looked like somebody’s sweatpants.

    I like colors (I loved the original vertical color stripe!) but I like scrolling, too… Better a break where the pattern wraps, sez I. I can scroll based on which part of the image I want to focus on, then…

38. I just have one question.
    How did you get the picture from the back of my eyelids on your website as a background?
    Hmmmmm…
    Curiouser and curiouser..

39. You know what… I’ve recanted.

    I like the VVG. I LIKE THE VVG!!! It’s prety and blue!!! Yes, it’s true.

    (the deco font, though. ugh)

40. I’m with Mary. Elvis improves everything. You need Elvis, Scalzi.

41. Alas, Elvis, while dead, is not out of copyright.

42. Something from the Electric Sheep site would be fitting, although those are screen savers and I’m not sure what the license entails.

43. This is the best background I have seen since I started reading whatever.

44. I like the art. Maybe The Scream would be more appropriate though.

45. can’t go wrong with starry night…

46. Seems a little soft, like the image you used was enlarged too much. Sharper would be better.

47. I like it, one vote yes. Although the suggestion to use the Chinese Magazine cover would be teh awesome too I think.

48. Next you should try some Giger. That oughta make for some good comments. :)

49. I was thinking the Scream as more appropriate as well. However, that is even more overdone than Starry Night. In the alternative, I suggest:

    http://www.postershop.com/Chagall-Marc/Chagall-Marc-Le-champ-de-mars-7600003.html

    and:

    http://www.dixon.org/Collection/Take%20a%20tour/Perm3.gif

    I was looking for a specific painting by Chagall, but now I can’t find it. Maybe it is in seclusion, because I saw it in a Sotheby’s (or Christy’s) catalog 20 years ago. I think it was Chagall, and it had a blue background with a red angular devil playing a flute on the lower left, and on the right was a tree of some sort. There were lovers or women dancing around (or above?) the tree, and in the upper right there was a red crescent moon. But it doesn’t appear to be online, or perhaps it isn’t by Chagall. But it is really cool looking.

50. I know I have been rather negative to your last versiones of background, but this one is really nice. It’s special – it’s colourful, but not hurtfully so, and it fits with your books (it makes me think of the earth seen from space).

51. Very, well, swirly, but with a tasteful blue tone. Expressive, one might say.

52. I like this background! John, I started reading you right before Christmas in response to the article about you in the U of C alumni mag, I’m class of ’82.

53. I like it. My fave is still the star map on the dark blue background.

54. I’m glad for the change. It’s easy on my eyes. I loved the crabapples and leaves here when I first started reading. I thought that particular look was striking and original.

    Obviously you’re having a ball with this stuff and though people seem to be full of advice, I will only recommend that you continue to have fun with everything on Whatever.

55. Been a reader of He-Who-Tapes-Bacon-To-Felines for about a year and am answering the call to arms, as it were. Hopefully the Hardbacks, Trade Paperbacks and Mass-Market Paperbacks can set aside their differences and come together for the sake of the kids. The video last week was…appalling. In all seriousness, this is a great thing you’re doing with the donation Mr. Scalzi. Your blog rocks!