(Roughly) Daily

(Roughly) Daily is headed, after this post, into it’s annual Holiday hiatus; regular service will resume on or around January 2.  So, with best wishes for the New Year, these practical tips for dealing with some of the exigencies of the season…

A chemistry-themed spice rack [pictured above]: This one really knocks it out of the park. It’s designed to go on the counter, first of all, and it’s fragile, so if you have badly-behaved cats you’re going to have to stress about them shattering all or part of it. In order to use it, people have to conscientiously funnel bulk spices into teeny tiny flasks, which is a pain in the ass. Nine of the thirteen containers are test tubes with curved bottoms so you can’t put them down on the counter and have them stand upright. They have corks as tops so you need two hands to open them and there’s no shaker. Finally — this is really the icing on the cake — they come with cute chemistry-themed labels but while they look like chemical formulas they’re super wrong, like “Salt” is “Sa” instead of NaCl, so if your recipient is a chemist, it is guaranteed to annoy the hell out of them. This is bulky, difficult to use, difficult to store, and also just stupid for its intended purpose…

Just one of the handy tips in Naomi Kritzer‘s “Gifts for People You Hate, 2019.”

And lest one forget oneself, here’s all one needs to know to make a Christmas cinema classic an integral part of one’s own celebration: step-by-step instructions on “How to make your own Die Hard Christmas tree ornament.”

* Craig Ferguson

###

As we check things off the list, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 that Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life premiered.  Featuring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a small town banker who has given up his dreams to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve elicits the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers).  Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched, and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would have been had George never been born.

The film disappointed at the box office on its release; but it was nominated for five Academy Awards, and has gone on to become a classic, recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made,

source