Oct
29
I hope I never, ever have to tinker with my WordPress theme files ever again, because the laborious process of tweaking this new theme into place nearly killed me this weekend, and it was only via the medicinal benefits of repeatedly applying large doses of Dr. Oetker’s Organic Brownie Mix (organic makes it healthy!) directly into my sobbing mouth that I was able to survive. There was a horrifying moment when I installed a plugin intended to make another plugin work (something to do with PHP, I don’t know, it’s all a chocolate-coated blur) and all of a sudden my copy of WordPress just . . . went away completely, leaving only a mysterious line containing the phrase “fatal error” in its wake, and before I managed to delete the offending plugin from my server via GoDaddy’s annoying ad-laden interface (their prices are great, but holy god, I feel like I’m being humped by a rabid Jack Russell every time I visit their site) I literally broke out into a full-body sweat, it was physically the exact same sensation as hitting “Send” on an email talking about what a ponytailed knob your boss is, only to notice that you have in fact sent this email directly to your boss. A colossal mistake has been made, and you have only your own dumbassery to blame.
Anyway, I think everything is fixed now, with the exception of some wonky behavior with those sidebar widgets if you’re running a non-current version of IE. Leave it to Internet Explorer to screw something up. IE is like some giant lumbering shithead you know is going to ruin the party, but you have to invite him because he’s fucking your sister, or something. Bad browser, no biscuit.
Enough about the website, let’s talk pumpkins! JB and I finally got around to hacking into ours last night, and although we had planned to carve some family-friendly pumpkins with the boy, for some reason Riley took offense to the sight of us plunging knives into the friendly orange gourds he’d been playing with for the last couple weeks. I know: what a wuss. Wait until he figures out Maisy is actually a sewer rat.
So we waited until bedtime to continue with our gruesome work—behold the results:
This is mine. I tried to copy the design on the front of the Extreme Pumpkins book, with lukewarm results.
And here is JB’s. You may be wondering if the terrifying orange lights dancing behind the diabolical monster’s face are in fact the flames of hell, and the answer is YES.
Well, flames of toilet paper, anyway. JB’s creation involved a full-body pumpkinman with actual fire shooting from the open head, which he achieved with a roll of toilet paper soaked in kerosene.
I have to say, he usually bests me in the jack-o-lantern department, but this year he really outdid himself. I suppose given the flammable nature of children’s costumes, we won’t be displaying this in the front lawn on Wednesday night—but maybe it can lurk from behind the fence. If the torn-up driveway doesn’t keep them away, the flaming pumpkin by-god will. And you know what that means: more candy for me.
Did you carve pumpkins this year? Share your pictures, if you’ve got ’em.
Oct
28
I installed a new WordPress theme yesterday, and so far I’m pretty happy with it—it’s a 3-column layout, so there’s more room to stuff various crap in the sidebar without shoving it all down to the bottom of the page. For those of you who use the widgets, there they are on the right (theoretically, anyway, I haven’t tested this on more than two computers); for those who claim the widgets make your eyes hurt, JONNIKER, you can just ignore that side of the page. Unless they give your browser fits, in which case 1) I’m really sorry, and 2) tough titties, because I don’t know how to fix that.
I also don’t know how to fix the one really big problem I have with this otherwise great theme, which is that the middle content column is too narrow for my photos, which are typically 500 pixels wide (the ones in this post are smaller). I figured I could just change that left column to be a bit more narrow, and make the middle column bigger, but when it comes to tinkering with the mysterious language that lives in those WordPress theme files, I’m sort of a mouthbreathing rhesus monkey, jabbing my clumsy banana-coated fingers at various keys, hooting angrily, and eventually throwing feces at the screen. I’ve already broken this site seven ways to Sunday trying to adjust those columns, and I think it’s time to admit I’m too damn stupid to do it. If any of you know your way around a pile of CSS, I could REALLY use your help. Shoot me an email and I’ll show you the stylesheet that’s been consuming me all weekend. Then you can point out the super-easy, even-a-shit-flinging-monkey-could-figure-this-out fix, and I’ll create a little shrine in your honor and worship your effigy every single night for a year. Unless that would be weird.
[Update: this has now been fixed, I think, by my GENIUS friend Jon.]
In non-website news, Riley sort of picked out a Halloween costume yesterday. Well, we were in the costume aisle at Fred Meyers and he was yelling “TOO FREAKY! TOO FREAKY!” about the giant inflatable pumpkin with an inflatable ghost slowly popping in and out of the top in what was, I have to agree, a completely freaky (and slightly dirty) manner, and when I found the one remaining costume in a size 2T and held it up for him, he replied with “NO PUMPKIN MOMMY. BYE BYE PUMPKIN!” so while I guess you can’t say he picked it out, he didn’t technically object to it either.
Anyway, it turns out the costume is supposed to be a mummy outfit, and it is formed of the cheapest, nastiest, most synthetic/flammable substance on earth—like nylon, except even more plastic-y somehow. It’s paper-thin and comes with various dangling strips that I guess are supposed to be loosened mummy wrappings, and the whole thing fastens with weak velcro pads which rip open at the slightest movement. The arms are weirdly short while the legs are miles too long, and there’s a silly head covering with a pair of glowering mummy eyes painted on the front.
It’s a piece of crap, but my boy had a ball wearing it yesterday, running around the (new!) living room and yelling “RAWR!” in his best mummy voice. I guess we’ll give it a spin on Wednesday, staying well away from open flames, gusts of wind, and children sporting home-sewed outfits made from organic sustainably-harvested alpaca.
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