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I'm going to hell...but I'll be laughing on the way down

I received a Christmas present from one of my best friends today.  It is both clearly inappropriate and yet hilarious at the same time. What I really found amusing is that the company, T-Shirt Hell.com, has a whole section of clothing and then they created a separate and increasingly offensive section appropriately named "Worse Than Hell".  Great gift.

The payback airline

Mental note: Don't screw with Monarch.  You mess with the crew by acting like a drunken buffoon and you could end up on a little island in the middle of nowhere. I mean come on, if you were on the plane and it detoured to drop off Captain Asshole on a 3x9 mile island wouldn't you cheer at least a little bit?

Link: Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Castaway: the price of abusing air stewards.

Art*o*Mat - vending creativity since 1997

I haven’t been to Tacoma in quite a while, other than to pass through on I-5. A visit to the Tacoma Art Museum was the last time I was there and it was to see a Catalan Masters of the 20th Century (Dali, Picasso and Miro) exhibit in 1997. They have sinced moved to a new building which means I've missed out, yet again, on a newly designed building (such as the Seattle Public Library which opened May 04 and I still haven't seen in person - man I suck). The only museum I try to hit on a regular basis is the Frye Art Museum, but I'm getting off the point.

I was just reading through the January 06 issue of "Seattle Magazine" and they had a small blurb about Art*o*mat.  In 1997 artist Clark Whittington converted an old cigarette machine to sell his black-and-white photos during an exhibit. The owner of the exhibit space loved the machine and kept it permanently (and is still there today). Whittington banded together with other artists to form Artists-in-Cellophane dedicated to creating "progressive, yet personable and approachable" art that is distributed through retooled vending machines.

There are more than 75 machines in operation across the U.S. today with about 400 artists supplying the content. The artwork is spread across various mediums; painting, drawings and cast-pewter works, to name a few. They even have a well-defined set of guidelines if you are supremely creative and interested in submitting your artwork for distribution.

What all of this is leading up to is that the Tacoma based art gallery BKB & Company had a revamped machine from the 1940's installed in June. Which makes a perfectly good reason to visit Tacoma during my holiday vacation.  I'm very interested in seeing what types of artwork you can buy from it, not to mention the machine itself.

Apparently, it works exactly like you would expect it to, you buy a $5 token, pull a lever to select an artist and deposit the token in the machine to receive your art. I think it's an interesting idea and worth checking out if you have one near you. It's fairly amusing that the art is close to the price of a pack of cigarettes in this state, although I'm not sure if that means the artwork is inexpensive or that cigarettes cost too much.  However, since I don't smoke, what the hell do I care?

Sucks to be cocky

I feel bad for the guy, but I also can't stop laughing when I look at the picture: Jockey pays the price for premature celebration - Horseracing - Sport.

I ate ravioli yesterday

This is something you don't read about everyday - Russian Cannibal Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Cooking Friend.  Hey kids, making your buddy into ravioli and sharing the meat with neighbors may seem like the thing to do in this season of generosity, but it's not.  Cannibalism does not make you cool. Now if he had made him into a four-course tasting menu...that would have been trendy and cool.

The best part of the story may be the stock image they decided to use for the story, I think it's cube steak.

Xbox 360 fun

Now that I'm on a vacation, of sorts, I've had a chance to relax a bit and finally break open the Xbox 360 that has been sitting here for a month.  A part of my team at work is responsible for Xbox Live Arcade and they have done an incredible job in creating an effective design.  I was also impressed with the wireless network adaptor (although it was a bit pricey), it was a snap to setup. From the time I opened the box to playing an Arcade title was about 10-15 minutes which included setting up a Live account for the first time, not bad.

As another perk, I received my free keys for our Live games and walked though the process of entering them and downloading all of the games. I played quite a bit of Bejeweled 2 and Hexic HD, which you can really see the amount of improvements that were put into it for the 360 compared to the free web version.  I tried Wik: Fable of Souls, which has received some good press, but I wasn't really into it. I thought it was too hard to control, but I'll give it another try later on. The 360 achievements/badges (special graphics for reaching milestones in the game, such as high scores or games played) are fairly straightforward.

Here's my gamer card:

I have three traditional hard media titles to play as well: Perfect Dark Zero, Project Gotham Racing 3 and Kameo: Elements of Power. I'm really looking forward to Perfect Dark more than anything else which I plan on getting into this weekend.

It's good to work in games.

Completely barbaric

For fuck's sake, this is what I get for checking the news sites before going to bed: "Father in Pakistan Kills His 4 Daughters After One Marries the Man of Her Choice Against His Wishes"

And a hearty fuck you to any cultural relativists that try to lecture me about tolerance...

Merry Christmas

I did a Christmas get together with a couple of friends earlier this week that was fun. We exchanged gifts, ate dinner and listened to some Christmas music, including two of my favorite holiday songs: "Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt and "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses. 

My girlfriend is doing her traditional family get-together so I'm relaxing a bit, catching up on some reading, movies and drinking way too many pre-mixed Kahlua White Russians.  For some reason she thinks it's weird to get drunk on cream based drinks.  I have no idea where that is coming from, it's creamy, refreshing alcohol, what's not to like?

I'm currently watching the uncut, unedited, Comedy Central airing of "Jackass - The Movie". I want to be offended and snobbish about their antics, but I've been laughing too hard to care.  I've also dry heaved a couple of times and if you have seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Merry Fucking Christmas, in a good way.

Christmas shopping is done

I think I may have gone a bit overboard this year with gifts, but what the hell.  I didn't go completely crazy, but I did send out quite a few books, dvds, alcohol and I even, horror of horrors, sent out Christmas cards. Although, to be honest I bought them last year and completely forgot about them until after the holiday.

Each year when I do the book thing (thank you Amazon), I try to send books that meet a couple of criteria. They either need to have made some sort of impression on me or need to be something that I want them to read and get their perspective. Usually it works out, but not all of my friends are readers so I think my efforts sometimes fall on deaf ears (uh, eyes?).

For my girlfriend and my best friends I did a little more than others, which makes sense.  However, with Grace I went a bit wacky.  I think there were almost twenty-something presents counting little stocking stuffers.  She is probably going to freak a little bit, but hopefully in a good way.  I'll see her and another friend of mine tomorrow to exchange gifts and hang out.

We have a holiday party coming up next week with all the friends that I'm helping to arrange.  Now I have to figure out if I can/want to channel my Martha Stewart muse and create a bunch of holiday cookies for everyone.  I bought tins (again last year) for just this purpose.  If I could swing it, I would much rather bring a couple of packages of chocolate roulette to the party, if only they delivered to the U.S.

Surprising gift from work

Getting gifts from your boss seems odd, because unless you have a really good relationship with them, it's pretty important for you to like it - no matter what. I have to admit, some gifts from work are pretty cool (flat-screen monitors - for use at work obviously) and others are questionable (lapel pins).  Regardless, it's nice to get anything and it's always better than a sharp stick in the eye.

This year was a bit weird.  Our unit manager scheduled a full-team meeting on a Thursday followed by "holiday cheer". He also had his assistant send out an all-day, mandatory training for the following Friday.  Now, this set off alarm bells six ways to Sunday.  Don't get me wrong, I like where I work and I enjoy the company of most of my co-workers, but I would rather drag my testicles over ground glass than spend my free time with some of the people I work with. This goes double when there is alcohol involved.  My philosophy is that if you are acting like a drunken idiot, you deserved to get treated like one, however our human resources team disagrees with me.

The mandatory training also was suspicious.  Rumors flew about ranging from it being some "team-building" exercise to a very lame way to enforce attendance to a "real" holiday party.  Nothing says morale building like enforced and mandated time slots for fun.  I, of course, bitched, bitched and bitched.  I did to my immediate boss, some of my friends at work and to some people that I think were on my team, basically anyone who would listen to me rant.  My two cents was that if you wanted to make me happy, let me go back to work and avoid whatever badness was planned. If you tell me that work can wait, tell me I can go home. That would make me happy.

The day of the Thursday team meeting was normal. At the end of the meeting our unit manager started talking about time management, enhancing our organizational abilities and structuring priorities.  I was starting to freak out. If the training was going to be on some officespeak, Dilbertesque, feakshow, I would be obligated to stab out my own eyes.  However, he started to talk about the concept of found time and how productive it can be. To make a long story shorter, he gave us all the day off and by forcing everybody to cancel other meetings and shift our work to accommodate the "training" everybody actually had a free day. I couldn't freakin' believe it and I was shocked and happy.

About seven people came up to me afterward and gave me a complete smackdown for all my bitching about this whole affair. I ended up using the day to catch up on errands, finish my Christmas shopping and taking a nice long nap on the couch in front of the fireplace. It was the best day I had in a long time.