There's a ceramic note dispenser, a battery-powered pencil sharpener and several figurines. At home I have a maquette which features Taz in 3 common poses. Animators use maquettes to help them draw characters.

I'm not sure why I like these trinkets so much. Well they are kind of kitschy, and I do like kitschy. In a goofy way, Taz reminds me of, well, me.

I have a couple things in common with Taz.

We both growl a lot. Him because he is a Tazmanian Devil and according to the Zoology Department at Warner Brothers that's what Tasmanian Devils do. I growl a lot because of my occupation.

Snowballs and other stuff tend to roll downhill and while the information technology department may not be at the very bottom of that hill, we're darn close. Everything in a newspaper is connected to a computer and when things go wrong, my department often gets the call to get things right.

And when you've been doing that kind of work for over 15 years, you have a tendency to growl.

I also have an under-bite just like Taz. I didn't realize I had an under-bite until several years ago when I broke a tooth on a wayward piece of bone in a chicken pot pie at a Cracker Barrel. The dentist I went to told me that:

(1) I needed a crown to replace the mangled tooth. Ka-Ching!

(2) I had an under-bite and he could easily fix it by breaking my jaw and rewiring it. Ouch! Ka-Ching! Ouch! Ka-Ching! Ouch! Ka-Ching!

He told me that some people with under-bites have severe headaches. Considering that I never have headaches, I respectively declined his offer and allowed him to fit me with a crown.

Needless to say, I started going to another dentist after that.