Cuberats: What do you have decorating the walls of your cube? Other interesting items lying about?

[SteppingRazor]

I like to think I've got a pretty eclectic cube.

On the walls:
A photo of Dick Cheney waving and smiling with the words "Thanks a Million!" written on it. (Obviously, a joke given to me from a co-worker.)

Buttons featuring Bob Dylan, Michael Franti and a quote from Kurt Vonnegut: "We could have saved the Earth, but we were too damned cheap."

A tiny baggie with a little label reading "Free Dope Art" (the work of a local artist).

An evil eye that I bought in Istanbul, and some worry beads I bought in Athens.

My wall o' writers w/ guns, featuring pictures of Hunter Thompson, Ernest Hemingway and William S. Burroughs carrying firearms, all surrounding a poster of Thompson's "Gonzo" emblem that also features the quote "It never got weird enough for me."

A postcard a friend sent me that reads "The new soundtrack to your new life has just arrived. Punch the air!" (He sent it along with a mix CD of his favorite songs.)

On my desk:
One alligator head, real
One human skull, fake, with an American flag planted in the top of it.
One can, Pabst Blue Ribbon
One half-pint, Jack Daniel's
One quarter-pint, Tullamore Dew
A geode
A small statue from Hawaii
A pewter dragon
A magic 8-ball
A paperweight featuring a scorpion, real, encased in plastic
Mounds of books and CDs, and the usual office supplies -- computer, stapler, scissors, pens, etc.


That about sums it up. How 'bout you?

[Beer Snob-50]

1. MIne is the only wall in this whole boring building with stuff

Three framed pictures from the Red Sox 2004 Season
Two pictures from my SIL of African Art that she had later made into quilts
A plaque given to me because I am a good boy in the office
A t-shirt autographed by members of the NE Pats

On my desk the normal- Pic of my wife, Pics of my kids (well one of them when they were like 2 and 4 yo plus an elementry school pic of both), and an African Fertility God/dess statue.

[SteppingRazor]

2. I like the blend of Africana and Bostonianisms.

:thumbsup:

[Beer Snob-50]

6. it confuses my co-workers

but they are generally a boring lot.

[Call Me Wesley]

3. Concept & Design by Heidi:

Only the track lighting above still needs to be installed.

[SteppingRazor]

4. Hey, that's classy, CMW!

Very nice. :thumbsup:

[Call Me Wesley]

5. Thank you!

I tell Heidi. ;)

All the Hunter S. Thompson stuff is usually sprawled over my desk ... Including signed books by Ralph Steadman.

:hi:

[Heidi]

7. What you really need to do, SteppingRazor,

is spank CMW soundly for braggin' about his signed Steadman books, as well as his distracting fixation on HST's writing, which occupies not only much of his desk, but also much of his Kindle. :rofl:

[SteppingRazor]

9. Obviously, given my avatar photo, I'm just as guilty as anyone...

although I will say I've gotten away from the man's writing a lot in the last few years. More and more, I'm convinced that his useful career ended at about the time he went to Africa to cover the Rumble in the Jungle and, instead of covering the boxing match, played hooky and got wasted at the hotel pool. Everything after that is pretty much a reiteration of earlier work, though much of it offers the flashes of brilliance, stylistically, that the man reliably tossed out throughout his career.

[Heidi]

14. And that succintly describes the sadness I associate with HST's career.

"...flashes of brilliances...that the man reliably tossed out throughout his career." That was his choice to make as an artist (and I consider him more of an artist than a journalist) but I still find some of his choices sad, somehow. :(

(Says she with the HST sigline.)

[SteppingRazor]

16. There's a fine line between drug-fueled inspiration and drug-fueled malaise...

and Hunter crossed the edge several times over. That's a surprise to no one, I suppose, but it really is true (at least, as far as I've seen in my own life, writing about bands and whatnot) that while drugs can fuel something as gorgeous as, say, the coda to "Layla," they inevitably lead to a downward spiral in which creative output is hopelessly stymied. And once gone, it's tough to impossible to get back -- just look at the "blah" that defines Eric Clapton's career since he beat the horse.

Basically, it's the old adage -- the star that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

[Brickbat]

8. When I was still in an office, I kept a lot of postcards and photos, but of unusual things I like,

such as the largest open-pit iron mine in the world, Agate Fossil Beds National Monument, and my favorite Woody Guthrie poster ("I hate a song that...").

Items included rocks collected on a visit to Lake Superior with my daughter, a couple Lake Superior agates, and a Viking helmet.

At every job I've ever had, I always have El Lissitzky's eight rules of word design posted on my wall:

The words on the printed sheet are learnt by sight, not by hearing.

Ideas are communicated through conventional words, the idea should be given form through the letters.

Economy of expression – optics instead of phonetics.

The design of the book-space through the material of the type, according to the laws of typographical mechanics, must correspond to the strains and stresses of the content.

The design of the book space through the material of the illustrative process blocks, which give reality to the new optics.

The supernaturalistic reality of the perfected eye.

The continuous page-sequence – the bioscopic book.

The new book demands the new writer. Inkstand and goose-quill are dead.

The printed sheet transcends space and time. The printed sheet, the infinity of the book, must be transcended.

THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY

[SteppingRazor]

12. Hmmmm. It all seems pretty normal, until I get to the bit about the Viking helmet.

I feel like the old Sesame Street song: One of these things is not like the others... :)

[Richardo]

10. In keeping with my logistics job description: a globe from 1938...

...sent to me by a certain favorite someone. :loveya: (Sample countries: French Indochina, Rhodesia, Italian East Africa)


+ Puppy and family photos, coffee cups, and project-oriented cargo pix.

[SteppingRazor]

11. Neat! Does it have Siam or Thailand? n/t

[Richardo]

15. It's shown as Thailand (Siam)

...also Iran (Persia). No Pakistan or Lebanon, either. ("Beyrouth" is in Syria) :hi:

[NightWatcher]

13. how I picture your office....

My home office has a set of steer horns at the top of my bookcase, a cohiba glass ashtray, a few empty tequila and rum bottles, 3 beer can koozies, an autographed Clint Eastwood picture, several miscellaneous cigar boxes (some empty, some not), a beer tap handle from Monty Python's Holy (gr)Ail, and it used to have a vertebrae from a right whale, but we kept scratching our legs on it when we walked by it, so it's not in the living room near the aquariums.

[SteppingRazor]

18. First off, I'm honored by the comparison, but ... a vertebrae from a right whale?

How the hell did you come by a vertebrae from a right whale?

[NightWatcher]

19. fiance is a marine biologist

not your typical tchotchke, eh?

[XemaSab]

17. My last cube I had pictures of bird attacks

Birds attacking monkeys, birds attacking foxes, birds attacking small children.

Righteous. :D

[SteppingRazor]

23. Awesomeness.

:thumbsup:

[nickinSTL]

20. not much

a wedding pic of me and the wife.

I also have a brain-shaped stress ball - one of my supervisors gave it to me, ostensibly to throw at her to get her attention - which I've never done...it's soft, but that still seems like a bad idea.

I'm boring.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

21. Some odds and ends...

Several model airplanes (A Boeing 787, two DC-9s, two Concordes and a Cessna 172)
A small bust of Dante
A maneki neko cat figurine
A magic 8-ball
A magnet that says "DRINK COFFEE, Do Stupid Things Faster With More Energy"
A narcissus plant
A large stuffed toy rabbit
A number of Dilbert cartoons
A model sailboat
A little green metal box full of paper clips
A cloisonne frog

[SteppingRazor]

22. Nice! We've both got the magic 8-ball!

:hi:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. How does anybody survive without one?

[arbusto_baboso]

25. As for me, the big attention getter is the pint glasses...

and other assorted beer receptacles of different shapes and sizes.

My personal faves are the postcards from Prague's Museum of Communism. One has a typical Communist propaganda poster with the farm woman and factory man, with the logo: "Opening Late. Closing Early. Annoyingly long lunch break." The other has a similar scene captioned: "The shops seldom had toilet paper. Fortunately, there also wasn't much food."