www.charlottesville.org

Yes, Charlottesville there is a god. How do I know? I know because the City of Charlottesville finally has (drum roll, please!) a new website. I know, I know: You don’t believe me. You’re rubbing your eyes as if what you read could not possibly be true. Your mouth is hanging open in disbelief. You’re rethinking long-held beliefs about the existence of Santa Claus. And yet? It’s true, I tell you: TRUE!
    Don’t take my word for it. Go to www.charlottesville.org yourself and you will soon see that what was the world’s crappiest website is no more. It has thankfully and at long last been put out of its incomprehensible-design-and-un-bearable-font misery. In its place you will find a nice palette of tan, brown and blue- green, photos of happy families gleefully fetching their mail and blissfully wandering the Downtown Mall. Plus, you can do anything your little citizen heart desires via the new site. Pay your water bill, apply to be on some random commission! It’s fun for the whole family!
    Mind you, none of this was easy. At the celebratory party the City threw for its high-tech baby—complete with cake and girls dressed in trench coats and dark glasses handing out charlottes ville.org mousepads (yes, I got one, and yes, my reaction, like yours, was: whaaaaaaa?)—much ado was made about the fact that this site was seven years in the making. Seven years?! Has the Internet been around for that long?
    And so, a moment of silence
for the old incarnation of our City’s website: R.I.P. old charlottes ville.org. Your ugliness and retardedness will be sorely missed and never parallelled. I hope you don’t
take this too hard. We were great together while it lasted, but I really think that
we’d outgrown each other a long, long, long, long time ago. Don’t worry, it’s not personal: it’s business.—Nell Boeschenstein