On 2/9/99, Mr. Shawn and I were nearing the end of our lunch hour and decided to get a quick
smoke. While outside, I looked at the ashtray in our company's smoking area and made the comment
that it looked pretty damn nasty. Mr. Shawn suggested that I take a picture of it and put it on
my web page.
I got the digial camera and began a tradition. Each day I would go outside and take a picture of
the ashtray on my break. After some quick editing, I'd write up something witty to go along with
that days picture and upload it to my site. On those rare days that I wasn't able to get the
picture, I'd upload something for filler (a hand drawn sketch, a 3D render, someone else's ashtray).
After a short period, I had a fairly large collection of images, and the people I work with were begging
to pose with the ashtray.
Then the amazing happened.
ZDTV ran a quick spot about "State of the Ashtray" on their show, and the hits came flying in. We went
from 3 to 7 hits a day to thousands! This, of course, inevitably led to several server crashes and the
eventual loss of my webhost, but MAN... what a ride!!
It always remained fairly popular at work, of course, with the exception of the housekeeping staff. They
had my schedule down pretty well after a while and made sure the ashtray was cleaned before I went on
break. When I stared taking the pictures at random times, they took action, and an era ended.
The Day the Ashtray Died
The "State of the Ashtray" was shut down for 15 months on 4/12/00. I had gone on vacation to the coast for
a week. When I returned, our beloved ashtray was gone. In it's place was the plastic monolith you see below
as well as the announcement that was made.
04/12/99
"Well kids... the gig is up. We are officially ending the "State of the Ashtray" page, as
our housekeeping department has finally found a way to not clean the ashtray without letting
me take photographic proof of it."
Our NEW ashtray as of 04/12/99 at 9:45 AM PST
What the hell?!? I go on vacation for a week and come back to this giant plastic phallic symbol?
For "Cigarette butt disposal only!", so don't get any funny ideas!
Ohhh... could be fun!
If anything interesting happens with this bad boy (i.e.: it catches on fire or we dump it to see if the
base makes a neat cigarette butt "rollo"), I'll letcha know. In the mean time, enjoy the archive of
the last few months of images!
Quotable Quotes: Thing's I've heard other say about the new ashtray.
"It's ribbed, for MY pleasure!"
"Hey look... it's got a "butt hole"!"
"That is the stupidest looking ashtray I have ever seen in my life"
"The base is bigger, so you know when to stop inserting it"
"It looks like a droid from the new Star Wars movie"
"Woah... you could take a core sample with this thing!!
"It looks like a big-ass sex toy!"
"Ya know... it kinda looks like some weird kind of alien probe!"
"How do you make the Genie come out?"
"My God... it's full of stars!"
Ok... so most of them are "butt jokes"... but hey... I thought some of them were funny!
