RE: emacs looks ugly with 2 colors in the background, how do I fix this?

[Drew Adams]

> My emacs looks ugly and weird  with 2 colors in the background. It
> looks like "light cyan" everywhere, except "ivory" which is under
> and near text lines. Not sure how that is controlled. How do I fix
> this ... ivory would probably ok.

As that is not the default appearance of Emacs, it is no doubt
due to something in your init file (~/.emacs).

1. Start Emacs without your init file, to confirm this: emacs -Q.

2. Bisect your init file recursively to find the culprit code.
   Comment out half the file, then 1/4, then 1/8,...  You can
   use `M-x comment-region' to comment out selected code, and
   use `C-u M-x comment-region' to uncomment the selected code.
   (Or bind `comment-region' to a key - I use `M-;'.)

A guess would be that either (a) you have customized Emacs or
(b) you have chosen a "theme".  Whatever it is, it is likely
your init file that holds the answer.