The default cairo font seems to be sans, but the default pango font is
serif. Maybe it has something to do with my system font settings, but I
doubt it: my desktop font settings are all sans-serif. So I think pango
is just showing bad taste.
Anyway, this just hardcodes the font to "Sans". Maybe somebody wants to
make this all part of preferences some day, or pick it from their
desktop font preferences. In the meantime, just fix the pango brain-damage.