A Dialogue Concerning Website Banners

By Bub

The following is an imagined conversation and the Jake and Nate mentioned in the story do not (necessarily) represent The Jake and Nate you have grown to love (or hate).

Jake: The chocolate frosting is so thick and creamy, you can almost see the individual delicious granules of flavor in it, and the jelly, let me tell you about the jelly…

Nate: I don’t want to hear about the jelly, you listen to me, you sound like you want to have lunch not discuss a website banner. A doughnut is a doughnut, and besides this one even has a bite taken out of it. It’s disgusting.

Jake: No it isn’t, it’s radiant. That jelly is so red and vibrant it’s as though it contains the ontological secret of life itself and you could be privy to that secret too if only you’d go on and lather it all over your face like I’m asking you to.

Nate: You’re asking me to lather my face in jelly? What kind of breakfast bukkake is this? All I’m saying is, what does a doughnut with a bite taken out of it have to say about anything let alone One Year In Texas? Nothing.


Jake: On the contrary, that half eaten doughnut has the entirety of human existence within and without the contours of the air pockets of its dough. The fried outer crust tacitly represents that tough outer shell we all put on in our lives. Maybe it’s to different people for different reasons but everybody does it. Maybe you try to project an image of confidence and capability at the work place but when at home you’re as self-doubting and fallible as every human being. Or maybe you’re hardening you’re exterior so as to shut anyone new out because you’ve become so cynical over the years that you can’t stop the flaws that every person has - the fact that someone could genuinely enjoy a certain art house film that all the art house film crowd enjoys, or the band Mudvayne, or believe in God from becoming the cartoonish embodiment of a ’pretentious prick’ or a ‘douche bag’ or ‘ignorant’. You’ve lost the capability to realize that everyone has good and bad in them and aesthetic choices, entertainment choices even metaphysical choices are ultimately arbitrary and that everyone has a lot more in common than they have differences and therefore you should focus on the good. What this doughnut does is it gives us permission to bite down to the genuine self through the medium of humorous and comedic writing. That greasy hide has its rewards but at the same time it is no substitute for the fluffy dough-dreams of the subconscious or the flavor explosion of the jelly soul. Taken together with the chocolate of conscious existence and this doughnut says everything that could ever be said about anyone.

Nate: Listen, you’re beginning to sound like ‘the cartoonish embodiment of a pretentious prick’. It’s a gross-ass doughnut, all gooey and pornographic, and it looks like the cover of an Animal Collective album and not the banner of a comedy website.

Jake: Ugh, you’re such a Philistine. I suppose menacing bunnies, or some kind of cartoon mountain eating a flying orb is less pornographic and ‘says more’ about the collective comedic tastes of the website’s contributors?

Nate: A rotting doughnut carcass only says that we have poor taste in food, and that we’re too lazy to clean things up. Just think of how that translates to the expectations of the reader toward the actual material.

Jake: You’re missing the point, the doughnut is beautiful.

Nate: The doughnut sucks!

Jake: The doughnut has more beauty in the crumbs it leaves on your lap and the jelly on the corners of your mouth than any other banner could attempt to achieve.

Nate: The doughnut sucks!!!

Jake: You’re so hot when you’re agitated.

Nate: Well let’s make like Jimmy Hoffa and do some agitatin’.

Jake: That’s a collective bargain I can agree to!!!!