Hi, all. I just wanted to let you know that we here at You Bitch! are not without the Spirit of Christmas. We went to the grocery store today and bought 5 bottles of wine and a crate of Carlsberg, so it’s shaping up to be a merry one, indeed.

I’m a Christmas guy, despite my lack of devoutness, or any other property that would reek of character. It’s probably because I like getting presents, and I plan to clean up this year: The crappy little British tree that’s shedding needles all over my living room carpet as we speak plays host to a gleaming pile of brightly-wrapped packages, each of them the potential Perfect Toy that I expected throughout childhood, but alas never received. But hope springs eternal, and after a good shaking of each and every one of those packages my optimism is strong.

So, let’s all get ‘faced and wander into pointless arguments with dear relatives. It’s what Christmas is about, and it will end in tears. So enjoy the food while you can.

Last night, I sat down with the Sistas, and we opened up the Game of Life. We’d procured it for a measly £1 at a local charity store a few months ago, and were cracking the box for the first time. It being a used specimen bought on the cheap, the usual defects were there: broken pegs, dog-eared 10,000 bills and promissory notes. Unfortunately, the rules were also missing.

We googled for the rule book, and came up with dozens of different versions of this bastard game. There are more variations to this game than I would have thought. It never really seemed like the organic type of game that would evolve over time. When I was getting my ass beaten at it as a child, it seemed that the adults so thoroughly dependent upon its intricacies that the slightest variation thereupon would render it unplayable.

This being the UK edition, the rules and numbers are different from the one I grew up with in the US. My playing companions, being Germans, were also used to different rules; notably, the German version probably doesn’t require you to pick a career until the half-way point.

We managed to cobble up a thoroughly unplayable system of compromises from the various rules, where they made sense (or didn’t). Nevertheless, I got my ass handed to me, just like always. You can read the rest of the story over there.

So, does anyone out there happen to have a copy of the ©1992 Milton-Bradley Game of Life (UK Edition)?

Also, I found the scanned handbooks to all Milton-Bradley Games, ever. Check ‘em out. Don’t miss the first-edition rules to Axis & Allies!

This image just came crawling across my emails, embedded in an advertisement for the karaoke game, Lips.

I have no idea what those little monsters are supposed to represent, crawling all over those terrified teens. It looks like some of the sicker shit the Japanese come up with for the comic books, don’t google it kids.

Then again, I wish I’d had a couple of them in High School. What am I talking about? I could use a couple of them right now.

Whatever they are, they are creepy little bastards.

So, does everybody like us now? Or do we have to wait until January?

I love this.

From A Softer World, of course.

British women have interesting taste in footwear. I captured the following image from the front page of eBay, sometime in the middle of July:

These things were all the rage this summer, and last year as well, if I remember correctly. There’s nothing like a fishbelly-white pair of legs sticking out of a pair of hairy boots to make you think Sexy!

I’m not sure why a woman would choose to wear mukluks in the middle of summer. English summer, mind you, isn’t much distinguishable from any other time of year here, but still: It’s the principle. It’s simply taboo to break out the mukluks before Labor Day.

While traipsing around the Farnborough Air Show over the weekend, I saw this:

I have no idea what they’re selling. It’s in English, I suppose, but it’s like they wrote the entire thing with leftover pieces of one of those refrigerator magnetic poetry things. It sort of reminds me of Naked Lunch.

And then, I saw someone with the Best Job Title Ever:

How’s that for a business card? “Customer Support Bombardier”. In Belfast, no less.

There were a few planes for the budget-minded, for example the legendary MiG-29’s, “upgraded to NATO standards”:

Nice Mario Bros. paint job, Ivan. But it was nice to get a chance to kick the tires on it, albeit not too hard:

Apparently NATO standards don’t include rotating the tires once in a while. We watched the two MiGs take off on Monday morning, flying back to whatever Communist hell-hole they were on loan from. They left trails of black smoke behind them, like they had a leaky gasket somewhere. What a rickety piece of shit.

There were all the things you’d expect from an airshow, even a World War II-vintage Avro Lancaster flying around, which was a special sight. One thing I didn’t expect to see, though, were Muttley and Dick Dastardly:

Huh? Are the pimping a Laff-a-Lympics movie now?

You may think you have distractions in your workplace, but take a look at what’s been outside my office window all week.

That’s some exotic hardware being collected for the Farnborough Air Show, which starts next week. So far, we’ve identified:

• Apache (Longbow maybe? It had the pod)
  
• WWII-vintage Spitfire
• F-15
  
• F-16
• F-18
• F-22
• Avro Vulcan
• Eurofighter Typhoon
• Airbus A380
• Whatever trainers the RAF Red Arrows are flying these days
• many more that we haven’t been able to ID yet

All of these beautiful flying murder machines are out in our back yard, kicking ass and tearing shit up. The Avro Vulcan is probably the most striking aircraft I’ve ever seen, and it snuck up on us a couple of days ago. I just looked out the window and it looked like a huge manta was about to attack the building. But it just started doing some lazy loops and turns, and eventually disappeared. It didn’t land at the airport, sadly.

We are having a fine time in the office, but I felt bad for the customer I had on the phone when the Red Arrows started their 30-minute rehearsal today. They actually took off with the smokers going, in formation. Show-offs. I went out onto the roof of our 5-story parking deck to watch them go, and man, what a glorious chaos of noise, smoke, and low-flying metal.

My desk is right across the street from the runway where all this is happening. Being right on the airport, we’re pretty used to hearing planes taking off and landing. The windows are thick, sound-proof slabs that are supposed to block any noise that comes at them. But when an F-22 buzzes your office building (as one did Thursday during a meeting), there isn’t much any glass can do about the roar of those wonderful, CO2-pumping engines. In fact, any time a military aircraft is getting started the noise level is so intense that the entire office stops working, walks over to the windows, and waits for the show to start.

When the F-18 started doing loops and vertical climbs, a buddy and I went out to have a cigarette and enjoy the show. Right when we opened the door, it blasted past us at about 200 feet off the ground. Every car alarm in the parking lot went off. It was fucking awesome.