Shaft!

You're daaaamn right.

This is a picture I took today at my place of business. It clearly shows the elevator shaft leading to the building's surface level entrance, which has been cleverly disguised as a Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant.

Note the lack of an elevator car in the shot. This is due to the fact that we don't believe in things like "waiting" for elevator doors to open. Time is money, and if a guy has to rappel down the exposed, grease-covered cables holding the car up and slip through the maintenance hatch to get into the elevator quickly, so be it.

The shaft passes upwards through the human biological weapons testing wing and the Infinite Monkeys/Typewriters labs. We only have about 120 monkeys and typewriters so far due to the economic downturn, but as the country's finances pick back up we're looking to upgrade to 250 monkeys/typewriters out of infinity monkeys/typewriters. Those Shakespeare works won't write themselves!

Downwards, the elevator suddenly snakes sideways through the sewer system (alliteration!) for about 100 feet before plunging at terminal velocity towards the bottom of a mile-deep natural chasm in the Earth's crust. That's where the break room is located.

Microwaves are for pussies.

My company actually used to rent the penultimate sub-floor of the facilities. We decided to abandon it in favor of much more reasonable rent prices, as well as the fact that mole people kept breaking in at night and eating our janitorial staff. Good sanitation isn't cheap, you know. The ultimate sub-floor, of course, is rented by the mole people.

Photo taken by Phil G. (before he was eaten by mole people) of our children's toy manufacturing area.

Note the preponderance of loose rock and exposed wiring. We have our priorities straight!

Anyway, my job isn't the most fascinating or impressive in the world. That title goes to Steve in accounting. Nevertheless, I hope this little glimpse into the workaday world of corporate America has given you some insight into your own career choices. It also might give you a newfound appreciation of the elevators in your own buildings. You know, the ones that don't fall nearly a mile in pitch darkness before jerking to a stop over a lava lake surrounded by charred human remains.

Don't Believe the Hype

Hello, loyal readers! I'm sure some of you are wondering what has happened to the promised HYPEs that I had mentioned so long ago. Well, like so many things, I just kinda stopped caring after a while. In this case "after a while" is interchangeable with "after I did the first one."

Is this the end of the HYPE? Probably not. But I kind of figured there wouldn't be a good way to keep this going on any kind of consistent basis.

If I end up planning something badass at a future date, I'll let you all know. Last time I kind of threw the event up in the air and hoped somebody would catch it (spoiler alert: nobody caught it and it twisted its neck 180 degrees on the harsh, unforgiving ground. It is now in a medically-induced coma at Grady hospital). When and if I do another one, I'll try to get some more notice in between the announcement and when the event actually is, instead of running into the blog like a surprise witness in those old courtroom dramas and yelling about when the event will be held.

Now I know you're all drowning your keyboards in delicious, salty tears of pure anguish at the thought of not being able to cavort with moi, the debonair, suave, and all-around great author of this magnificent blog. 

Artist / Unemployed police sketcher's rendition of you after hearing this news. 

Also what the blog author looks like at any time on any given day.

But! Don't go and fling yourself out the window of your house/apartment/prison cell just yet! If you don't live above ground, then don't dig down with your bare hands until the heat and pressure of the Earth's crust turns you into a foul, misshapen piece of carbonized doo-doo. There will definitely be some cool stuff coming up soon. It's going to be summer, and there will be plenty of places to go, movies to see (and possibly mock openly in the theater like the trolls we are), and mayhem to wreak upon the fair city of Atlanta.

You don't have to believe the HYPE, because the HYPE believes in you! Sweet vaudeville-loving Zoroaster, that sounded gay.

Please Drink Responsibly

A while back, one of my friends had a great idea for a beer. You know how every company that sells alcoholic drinks in the US has to put something in their ads about "drinking responsibly" or telling customers to "enjoy responsibly" and phrases like that? I guess there's some regulation that the government created regarding the ads that requires companies to put that phrasing in there so that they won't be held responsible (ha ha! GET IT?!!) when their customers go out and act like total lushes. Well, my friend decided that it would be a good plan to make a beer and name it "Responsibly", so that even our competitors would be telling you to drink it!

So, in the spirit of good-natured competition that doesn't require testicle-shrinking steroids to be successful at, I have decided to have a contest of sorts. The contest is to design a logo for Responsibly beer. It can be pretty much any style, and I will be providing my own entry by the end of the week. Somewhere on the logo it should have the phrase "Please drink Responsibly", because not only will it satisfy the legal requirements of US sales, it will be good self-promotion.

I don't really have a prize for winning. Maybe I can send the winner a birthday card I found on clearance at CVS that says "Happy 80th birthday! You're somehow not dead!" It was all I could afford at the time, so shut up with your talk of "it's not my birthday" and "I'm not 80" and "but I'm already dead". Sometimes it's the thought that counts.

Contest entries will be accepted through whenever the fuck I feel like it. I'm kinda laid back with things like that. Entries will not be judged unless there are more than 5, and then the winners will be chosen by a trained elephant seal down at the Georgia Aquarium, so you can be sure it will be impartial.

So remember everyone, please drink Responsibly! Drink as much of it as you possibly can!