is my blog ugly? distracting? illegible?

this morning, my previous post about joshua claybourn and his role in the ellsworth/daniels underage drinking story got linked by atrios. i'm not sure which was more vindicating: being atriosed or being banned from ITA. okay, it was being atriosed.

anyway, after atrios linked me, i got a couple complaints about this design. an atrios commenter thought my color scheme was more flashback-inducing than the aquamarine and purple at fafblog. and an anonymous commenter here suggested i shut off my animated turntable graphic, as it "makes the blog unreadable for dyslexics like myself."

so consider this the official place to complain about/commend my blog design. i will consider any comments you want to make. i simply don't have time to redesign this month, but it would be a simple matter to replace the animated turntable with a static graphic if there is an outcry for that.

naturally, i think both my color scheme and the turntable graphic are pretty sharp. personally, i like including a bit of animation in my designs, since virtually no blogs seem to do so. but i understand that animation can be distracting, and moreover that some people might unconsciously associate any such animations with advertising. perhaps animation is only suitable for blog designs if it's subtle, like on montana & mcdeviltoast. i've also wondered whether the gray colors i've used for links might be a little too dark.

i like the design and graphic the way they are, but if they're causing me to lose readers, i'm willing to change. though i'm not making any promises. the goal is to have a design that looks snappy, represents my style, and is legible/usable. in this case, two out of three is bad. so speak up.¶