We had the initial examinations of the aforementioned design submissions this morning. Attendees were myself, the HPDEB and the Riddler. From past experience, we were very much aware that discussing design issues with the Riddler is fraught with peril. The potential for ruin, disaster, rampant cock-swinging and awkward silences cannot be overstated. We had carefully prepared the beginning of the meeting to corral his behaviour, which we accurately forecasted to resemble that of a 13 year-old boy on meth trying to discuss his vast sexual experience with a naked porn star.

The meeting produced the following gems:

“The web is in its infancy. We should be doing brand new things with interfaces. Like sticking boxes into them. Those boxes will do things. What those things are…well, I don’t know right now. But they will do something.”

“Our audience understands film reels. We need to tap into their collective unconscious and/or subconscious, which may not be an easy thing. They’ll understand it if we make the interface look like a film reel, because that’s a common graphic language we all speak.”

“We need to break down columns, that’s what we need to do. Columns are a separation. We need to see beyond that.”

“Steering wheels used to be in the middle of cars. Maybe we need to totally change everything like that.”

The meeting concluded with the Riddler trying to talk us out of paying for the design submissions. The entire mess was ably contained by HPDEB. I spent most of the meeting staring at the screen, trying to figure out how I could extract myself from the project entirely.