Scenes from a mall, shaking, and covered in hats

I took the bus to the Rideau Centre yesterday. For those not familiar with Ottawa, that's the biggest mall in the city. It's 3 floors, connected to the westin, and is normally crammed full of freaks. I was looking for a Christmas present for my mother, and I already knew what I wanted, so it was a pretty easy trip.

Things went well, there were much fewer freaks hanging around than normal, and the mall wasn't too busy at all. However, the general absense of people made it easier to focus on something else.

Christmas music pumped through the sound system.

I think today's Ctrl+Alt+Del describes my feelings on Christmas music. Unless it's a novelty song, those are tolerable in small doses.

You can call me a humbug, or scrooge, or whatever, but before you do, answer one question. When did constant irritation become part of the yuletide tradition?

In equally annoying news, my second monitor has developed a tremble. It's randomly shaking, and it makes it really tough to read, because the wavy picture makes me feel sick. It looks like something is interfering with it, but it just started last night after supper, so I have no idea what's causing it. We haven't gotten anything new in the past week, and there are no more devices than normal turned on, so if it is interference it's coming from somewhere else.

I just hope the monitor isn't failing. I've really gotten used to the dual monitor setup, and I don't think I can handle going back to one full time.

In happier news, I'm once again addicted to putting Santa hats on old video game and cartoon characters. In the past week I've put one on Wood Man, and a hat and a little Christmas tree on Astro Boy. I did some tricky things with perspective and space in those ones. Wood Man's hat goes behind the twig sticking out of his head, and Astro Boy's hat is waving in the wind.

These two go with the Don Flamenco I made last year, and the Bad Dudes intro screen guy I made at the beginning of the month. I also made one for Greg by putting a santa hat on that picture of George Bush as a muslim (you might have seen it online, if not, it's not really worth searching for).

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