Mystery Christmas Gifts

I have a puzzle that I need YOUR help to solve. Here's the scoop:

This past weekend I was in Edmonton for my girlfriend's Christmas family gathering. Part of this event is the "Tacky Gift Exchange." Basically, you get a cheap/ugly present put a $20 gift card in it, wrap it up, and everyone who participates takes one of the presents home.

Jen's brother in-law got this wonderful...thing for his tacky gift.

We seriously have no idea what it is. Nobody at the gift exchange knew either, not even the person who gave it away.

The best we could come up with is that it was some type of sushi thing. But that didn't really seem like a likely option. As you can see above, the wood grate on the top removes and has a shallow groove underneath. The little metal dish comes out too.

So if anyone knows what this is, and how to use it, feel free to let me know. It bothered me the entire car-ride home yesterday. Feel free to float theories as well, because I have absolutely no clue what this is.

Art Day: The Funkester

Here’s a long overdue Art Day. I can hardly believe it’s been more than a year since I last posted one!

Anyway, "The Funkester" is a really overdue piece I owed to a friend; He liked it so much he hugged me.

True Story.

Anyway, fans of Arrested Development will probably recognize this as one of Tobias Funke’s acting portfolio pictures. I scoured the internet for a large photo of this, but all I could come up with something about the size of wallet photo. This meant I needed to do a grid sketch, and then ink it. Here’s what the rough sketch looked like.

See the big improvement? But as always I’m never happy with the finished product. Tobias’ hands are too small, and I couldn’t get this eyes right. As they are now, they’re blank and zombie-like. I’ll probably sneak into my friend’s house and touch it up sometime.

As always, it’s a learning experience. This took somewhere between 8 to 9 hours to make, and I could easily cut that time in half. I think sometime in the New Year I might try something like this again, because it was quite fun actually! Anyone have any requests?

Hammin' it up for a Week

My girlfriend is up and abandoning me for a week and a half, so I’m living like a poor bacheolor for the next little bit. Yesterday she was going through the fridge and getting rid of stuff that would go bad/I would never eat, and we did an inventory check of what we I have to eat.

1 large ham. Seriously, I have like 3 pounds of ham to eat

2 eggs

6 Red potatoes

4 lbs of white rice

6 or 7 cans of tomato sauce

1 can of mushroom soup

Some cheese

And that’s about it. I think it’s going to be an interesting week. I’m probably going to subsist off of coffee and rice. I’m not even going to act like I’m going to be a real culinary master and reheat the ham. I’m probably just going to tear chunks of with my bare hands while wearing nothing but underwear and re-watch the Farscape series.

Soooo…if anyone in Saskatoon wants to be a real pal and hang out with me, that would be cool. I promise I’ll wear pants most of the time.

I have ham we could eat!

So much ham.