{"id":4886,"date":"2003-12-11T15:59:31","date_gmt":"2003-12-11T23:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/blog\/2003\/12\/11\/4886\/"},"modified":"2003-12-11T15:59:31","modified_gmt":"2003-12-11T23:59:31","slug":"white-elephant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/?p=4886","title":{"rendered":"White Elephant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We had a &#8220;white elephant&#8221; game at our office holiday party today- we stuffed ourselves with ice cream and cake and avoided work.  I ended up with some ancient memory sticks, and I brought in some Japanese <i>washi<\/i> paper dolls which ended up being some of the more popular items- they were &#8220;stolen&#8221; several times.<\/p>\n<p \/>\nI had rescued them from the trash when my dad moved his office.  I think they were originally a present from a Japanese energy utility executive&#8230; the bases they were on were pretty cheap wood and originally they were in flimsy acetate cubes that had yellowed with age&#8230; although elegant, I&#8217;m guessing they were made as a kit by a executive&#8217;s wife.  I&#8217;m not really into dolls, especially fragile paper ones that are constantly in danger of being squished, but I couldn&#8217;t quite just throw them away&#8230; I&#8217;m glad they have a home now, and nicer than the shelf in my garage.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p>  I remember the first time I did this &#8220;white elephant&#8221; game- I had to be like 8 or something and I was at a friend&#8217;s birthday party.  We all picked our presents, and I got something that was pretty cool.  Everyone was into it.  And then it got taken away.  I couldn&#8217;t believe this was really the point of this game.  I suddenly had a newfound interest in the rules- was he allowed to do that?  Yep.  Fucking assholes.<\/p>\n<p \/>\nThe moral of this story is-<\/p>\n<ul>\n<lI>you want something cool&#8230; but not too cool.  Deprecate your item if you like it.<\/li>\n<li>don&#8217;t get attached to your gift<\/li>\n<li>don&#8217;t bring anything people will want very badly<\/li>\n<li>don&#8217;t play this game if you are not yet in high school<\/li>\n<li>in retrospect, maybe I should have just thrown a fit and threatened the rest of the party with insane violence.  Hmmm&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sort of a Zen lesson isn&#8217;t it?  Impermanence&#8230; attachments&#8230; desire and suffering.  It&#8217;s all in there.  And all in about 20 minutes.  What a deal!<\/p>\n<p \/>\nThe Rules:<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<ul>\n<li>Everyone brings in a wrapped gift, a &#8220;white elephant&#8221;- something which is not junk, but you don&#8217;t want it.  The &#8220;wrapped&#8221; part is important.<\/li>\n<li>everyone takes  a number<\/li>\n<li>in order, the players take turns\n<ol>\n<li>you can take an unwrapped gift and unwrap it<\/li>\n<li>or you can take someone else&#8217;s gift<\/li>\n<li>if your gift is taken then you can pick again- an unwrapped gift or someone else&#8217;s<\/li>\n<li>The exception:  any one gift cannot be stolen more than 3 times<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Tantrums and beatings are optional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We had a &#8220;white elephant&#8221; game at our office holiday party today- we stuffed ourselves with ice cream and cake and avoided work. I ended up with some ancient memory sticks, and I brought in some Japanese washi paper dolls which ended up being some of the more popular items- they were &#8220;stolen&#8221; several times. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}