Now. Ain't That Some Shit?

Can we talk about this, please?

What the fuck? These are the home pages of the Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon websites. Notice a difference? Not only is the AA site better designed, more modern and more aesthetically pleasing ... it uses Flash.

The reason I discovered this atrocity, was because this past Saturday in DDP, we watched a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie starring James Garner, Jo Beth Williams and James Woods, as Bill W. "My Name is Bill W." is the story of Bill and Lois Wilson. Bill founded Alcoholics Anonymous after destroying almost everything he had because he was a drunk. Lois, his wife, founded Al-Anon, a group for the friends and families of drunks. I was going to write about the film for some reason, but now I can't remember what I intended to write. I was googling some information on the film and accidentally clicked on the AA link, not the Al-Anon one. And now I'm too distracted by the inequity in the different sites to recall what I wanted to write.

So. What am I going to do about this? I'm sure I can get Erica to redesign (or design for the first time) the Al-Anon site for free, we'd just have to get permission.

Dear Al-Anon,

You do amazing work. People all over the world are happier and saner as a result of going to the rooms. Yours is a great and noble program that deserves to present itself as such. And, Al-Anon. I am one of those people who has been helped. I have grown and learned so much from my meetings and I want to give back. I want to give back by offering to redesign your hideous, amateur website -- free of charge. Our members deserve to have as snazzy an online resource as those bastards who hurt us.

Sure, they're getting better and I am proud of them. But still, those of us who drained our bank accounts and cleaned up poop and vomit, deserve at least as nice a website. (And what I'm offering will be better.) The thing is, I feel that there should be an additional, unspoken step in Al-Anon, right between making a moral inventory of ourselves and admitting to ourselves, god and others all of our misdeeds.

4b. Having completed our moral inventory, we have realized that we are worthy of pretty things.

And, we are worthy of a well-designed website.

Your pal,
Susan

My god. Fucking Wal-Mart is starting to be trendy. And Wal-Mart is the devil.

Haven't we gone through enough? Do we have to suffer being shit on by the addicts' good design skills as well? We've already surrendered our childhoods and sanity. When does the hurting stop and the healing begin?