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BUDGET: MOTHERFUCKING OWNED.

I met with my bosses this morning to get next year's budget approved, and as I was able to show my work in calculating consultant fees and travel expenses, they gave me the go ahead. I just logged into our finances website and entered next year's budget. This is exciting to nobody but me, because:

1. Accountants and other financial people: do this shit all the time, very unimpressed.
2. Everyone else: will never have to do this shit and therefore has no context for the glory of my accomplishment.
3. It's not like I climbed a mountain and fought a werewolf with a sword or something. I typed a bunch of numbers into a cloud-based spreadsheet.

But let me tell you: IT'S GLORIOUS.

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The illegal photos I take for you guys...

At the Cultural Centre gettin' down with the dead.

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Last night I went to the Morbid Curiosity exhibit at the Cultural Center. The exhibit is a showcase of pieces collected over the years by Richard Harris, who collects on the theme of death and the insubstantiality of life. The exhibit consists of two rooms: the Kunstkammer (Curio Cabinet) of Death, which is basically a room jammed with stuff, and the War Room, where the works explore the relationship between violence and mortality.

( Awesome art displayed extremely badly. )

So it was a good time, but it could have been a lot better, which is sadly what I've come to expect of exhibits at the Cultural Center. I can't be too hard on them; the thing was free, and the Cultural Center has never really known what to do with itself as a space, though it's beautiful architecturally and I personally think it would make a marvelous museum if one could take it in hand the right way. But it doesn't have the money or the security to attract really top-level exhibits, and even if it did, it's competing with the Art Institute a block away. The placard in the War Room talks about Harris buying Picassos and Renoirs, and I have to admit I was really hoping for a Picasso skull, but of course the more well-known artists weren't in evidence. Half the time neither were the security guards, which is why I was able to snap as many photos as I did.

If you're in downtown Chicago between now and June, it's definitely worth a look, but don't plan your day around it. Swing by on your way out of the Art Institute, or go visit it and then head up the block to Sugar Bliss for a cupcake (which is what I did).

Mmm. Death and Red Velvet Cupcakes.