By So much of the art in Dead-Beef was lifted straight from our surroundings when Jeremy and I lived together in 2002. The shelf in the background of the first panel was this strange island shelf beside our kitchen. We decorated the shelf in toys and other knick-knacks (remember those NHL mini-mugs you could get from vending machines? Yeah, tons of those).
For some reason we also placed all our empty pop cans on top of this self. There was this two and a half meter long wooden beam that connected the kitchen to this island-self and it seemed like the sort of thing you line with empty pop cans. The problem was the shelf (and consequently the connecting beam) was really easy to bump when you walked into the living-room, which usually meant picking up about 10 pop cans and carefully placing them neatly back up on the beam.
It was a pointless exercise, but we performed it without fail for months. We did eventually get fed up with it and took all the pop cans down, but we probably a took lot longer than most sane people would have.