A Christmas Clean-Up

raincoaster reporting for Christmas Cleanup duty

raincoaster reporting for Christmas Cleanup duty

Note: Bloggers may be larger than they appear in amusing holiday-themed kitchenwear.

There’s a certain element of bloodthirstiness to many of the holiday celebrations, isn’t there?

Yes, there is. Shut up.

Think about it; who’d be celebrating Christmas now if Jesus hadn’t died young? If he’d quietly expired at the age of 70 or so, surrounded by children, grand-children, and great-grand-children? Nobody, that’s who. You can’t be a martyr without the sticky ending; just ask James Dean. And where there’s bloodshed, sooner or later, there is gonna be an underpaid member of a visible minority with a mop and a pail cleaning up that shit.

This post is about that. Where there’s Christmas Bloodshed, eventually there will be Christmas Cleaning Crews. As I am spending this pre-Christmas day cleaning up the place I’ve been house and pet sitting for the imminent return of The Owners, who clearly have higher house standards than I’m used to (a warming drawer for plates? Does even Goopy Paltrow have one of those?) I thought I would procrastinate by blogging about the process.

I guess digging under sinks to find cleaning products and figuring out what they are each supposed to do has an element of present-opening about it. Or at least it’s akin to digging through the bowl of assorted candies to find the green jellybeans and the licorice allsorts. Only if you get it wrong, you don’t just spit it into your napkin; you get to replace the hardwood floor. So, SUSPENSE! BLOODSHED! Back to the topic…

Remember that old seasonal classic The Night Santa Went Crazy, by Weird Al? Sure you do. In case you forget, here’s a claymation video to remind you.

Sure, sure, who doesn’t love a picturesque serial killer with a mysterious backstory, eh? But did you ever think about the poor clean-up elves who had to go in afterwards and sanitize the crime scene so it could be properly staged by the bored housewife the real estate agent hired to make it look saleable? Didja? Well, you’re about to.

There’s a game.

Seriously. It used to be simple: if you could imagine it, there was porn of it. Now we must be all wanked out, because if you can think of it nowadays, there’s a game of it.

Behold Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa’s Rampage edition.

Tragedy! Santa; the toy giving folk-hero, and purveyor of fine Christmas goods, has had enough. Endless requests from greedy children wanting more and more every year, tax increases, pressure from elf unions, bills, reindeer!
It is your duty, as an employee of Polar Sanitation Inc, to clean up the grizzly aftermath of Santa’s bloody rampage. Elves, reindeer and ruined masonry from Santa’s brief breakdown are all strewn across his famous workshop.
So don your cap, grab your mop, and get this place sorted out so the company can get a replacement in here ASAP, and restore Christmas for another generation!

Can’t imagine what that would look like? Thanks to YouTuber PewDiePie you don’t have to. He’s got a game run-through that would make Freddy Krueger proud.

Laura WAS decorating the Christmas tree...in a sense

Laura WAS decorating the Christmas tree…in a sense

Santa: the untold truth

He’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma nailed like jelly to the wall, and pinned down like mercury with a fork. What’s the truth about old St. Nick?

IS AMERICA READY FOR THIS?

Well, as I’m not American, I couldn’t care less.

The fact is, Santa Claus is a black man.

And the fact is, we’re closing in on his actual identity.

Snoop Claus

Snoop Claus

From the Department of Too Little, Too Late

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

You know, I’m sure it looked good on paper.

Also, what is it with me and the car/bike posts lately? This is not a car/bike blog. I haven’t had a driver’s license since shortly after the Great North American Road Trip from Vancouver to San Francisco, and that was in, like, ’93. We will return to our regularly-scheduled tentacle blogging and Assange perving shortly.

Someone’s going to be MADD at these guys

Now, is that a social media fail, or a marketing fail, or a just plain tragic any-way-you-look-at-it fail? Whatever it is, you just stay classy, Zimbabwe, you stay classy!

Easy Riders

Why do sexists get a bum rap?

Why do sexists get a bum rap?

This is the kind of marketing we can all get behind.

MotoCorsa a Ducati dealership in Portland shot an entire series of stereotypical “hot girl with bike” shots with a red bike, releasing the portfolio as “seDucative” which, ha ha. Then they did the same shots, using men who worked at the shop as models. God only knows where they found a tube top that size, but they did.

It’s the details that make the shoot, like the fact that they called this “Manigale” in reference to the Ducati 1199 Panigale. And that they gave the guys 11/4″ heels instead of the 4″ ones the female model is wearing. Well, presumably if you work in a motorcycle shop you need to use your legs for something other than posing, and a charleyhorse could be a career-blocking impediment to a day spent…I dunno, chatting up Ben Affleck?

You can see the whole series at AsphaltAndRubber.