Re-Gifters' Amnesty Thread

[shereads]

Use this thread to pass along a worthy but unwanted gift from a previous holiday, without guilt or the likelihood of hurt feelings. (There will be plenty of time for that when the family gets together over the holidays.) In exchange, you agree to accept the re-gift offered in the next post after yours. (No fake gifts, as a matter of honor. Don't make me come over there.)

The last post to the thread gets my re-gift: a boxed set of corn-on-the-cob holders with handles shaped like the heads and rear-ends of dogs. These are quality utensils in mint condition. The dog parts are of durable, life-like cast resin, and appear to represent both ends of four different breeds: a beagle, a spaniel, some sort of terrier and a German sheperd.

 

[BlackShanglan]

At my workplace, we have an event just for this sort of thing. We each bring a gift, with the rule being that no one is allowed to spend any money either on the gift or the wrapping. We get everything from relatively nice things - fondue sets, framed pictures, pet toys - to hideous, garish, appalling objects that should never have seen the light of day. The first person opens a gift; then we proceed in order, with each new person given the option of either opening a new gift or taking one that someone else already has. Anyone whose gift is taken gets to pick and open a new one. When the last person has gone, the first person gets the final choice to keep his/her gift or take someone else's. It's a great deal of fun and one can receive charming and valuable presents - like this year's masterpiece for me, an ugly plastic clock that plays Christmas carols - 12 different offerings! - every hour on the hour. Evidently my colleague received it as a gift from her mother in law.

My advice? Never go second

Shanglan

 

[minsue]

At my workplace, we have an event just for this sort of thing. We each bring a gift, with the rule being that no one is allowed to spend any money either on the gift or the wrapping. We get everything from relatively nice things - fondue sets, framed pictures, pet toys - to hideous, garish, appalling objects that should never have seen the light of day. The first person opens a gift; then we proceed in order, with each new person given the option of either opening a new gift or taking one that someone else already has. Anyone whose gift is taken gets to pick and open a new one. When the last person has gone, the first person gets the final choice to keep his/her gift or take someone else's. It's a great deal of fun and one can receive charming and valuable presents - like this year's masterpiece for me, an ugly plastic clock that plays Christmas carols - 12 different offerings! - every hour on the hour. Evidently my colleague received it as a gift from her mother in law.

My advice? Never go second

Shanglan

My extended family does the same thing at Christmas, though the gifts are supposed to be purchased (with a $20 limit). I'm sure there is plenty of re-gifting there, though. Nothing brings a family together like stealing from each other.



Sher, I'll contribute a lovely crystal angel statue. Not telling your pious in-laws that you're an atheist has its upside, sure, but one of the downsides would be iconic presents.

 

[Evil Alpaca]

At my workplace, we have an event just for this sort of thing. We each bring a gift, with the rule being that no one is allowed to spend any money either on the gift or the wrapping. We get everything from relatively nice things - fondue sets, framed pictures, pet toys - to hideous, garish, appalling objects that should never have seen the light of day. The first person opens a gift; then we proceed in order, with each new person given the option of either opening a new gift or taking one that someone else already has. Anyone whose gift is taken gets to pick and open a new one. When the last person has gone, the first person gets the final choice to keep his/her gift or take someone else's. It's a great deal of fun and one can receive charming and valuable presents - like this year's masterpiece for me, an ugly plastic clock that plays Christmas carols - 12 different offerings! - every hour on the hour. Evidently my colleague received it as a gift from her mother in law.

My advice? Never go second

Shanglan

A friend of mine has parties like that every year. They're called White Elephant Christmas parties, and sometimes I get really cool stuff! Cough . . . if you're into that sort of thing. I REALLY wanted that camoflauge (sp?) netting!

 

[shereads]

It's a great deal of fun and one can receive charming and valuable presents - like this year's masterpiece for me, an ugly plastic clock that plays Christmas carols - 12 different offerings! - every hour on the hour. Evidently my colleague received it as a gift from her mother in law.

Thank you for the lovely clock, and for going second, and for reminding me why I avoid office Christmas parties. (I typically end up with a Chia Head.)

Twelve Christmas carols! A lot of clocks like this one only go to eleven.

 

[shereads]

regift double post.

 

[cantdog]

I freely confess I've never done anything of the sort. Someone had to explain Yankee Swap to me, and I've already forgotten how it goes, beyond "bring a gift."

(I am not a conventionally social person, although I go to more dinner parties than you would think credible.)

I offer a Night Vision Scope. It looks like a monocular, and it may even be one, although it doesn't magnify terribly much. It requires batteries, which I may as well include.

Do not use it with adequate or especially with bright light! To do so, it says, burns the unit out in some fashion not described.

You put in the batteries and look through the thing "at" some object you can't yet even see. Depressing the handle gives your eye access, suddenly, to a green-on-black image of it, which appears as though a) whatever available light there is were to have played upon it for as long as the time you hold down the handle, all at once, so that you can see it well lit, and b) that available light were green and the lens system you look through were a piece of cracker jack plactic magnifying glass with vaseline on it.

Testimonials in the folded paper brochure explaining its use explain that you can identify owls by starlight with it. They would be the Great Blurry Green Owl, I take it, but the testimonials may be true, just the same. I have managed to identify the sex and age of shady characters who parked in front of my house and just sat in the car for fifteen minutes. Two males and a female in their early twenties, they were. And I eventually imagined they were smoking reefer, although the blur made that really a blue-sky guess.

cantdog

 

[impressive]

...

I offer a Night Vision Scope. It looks like a monocular, and it may even be one, although it doesn't magnify terribly much. It requires batteries, which I may as well include.

Do not use it with adequate or especially with bright light! To do so, it says, burns the unit out in some fashion not described.

You put in the batteries and look through the thing "at" some object you can't yet even see. Depressing the handle gives your eye access, suddenly, to a green-on-black image of it, which appears as though a) whatever available light there is were to have played upon it for as long as the time you hold down the handle, all at once, so that you can see it well lit, and b) that available light were green and the lens system you look through were a piece of cracker jack plactic magnifying glass with vaseline on it.

...

I'm really surprised you're giving up the "Silence of the Lambs" role-playing potential of this device.

I'll toss a black leather blazer (jacket, not vehicle) into the pile. SOOOOOOOOO not "me." Size 12. Classic styling, nothing funky. (And no, I don't mind giving up its role-playing potential.)

 

[Guest]

ah people...
i am so the winner of the oddest gifts recipiant award. im taking Imp's jacket and tossing in the plastic potted daisy night light. and just because im the nice person that i am...i have to give the choice between that and the 4" thick, fire engine red, sequin belt just right for those disco parties.

 

[shereads]

i have to give the choice between that and the 4" thick, fire engine red, sequin belt just right for those disco parties.

< raising my hand, bouncing up and down >

Me! Me! Me!

To hell with the rules of the game! I know it's not my turn and I have a fabulous clock already, but puh-lease let me have the red sequin belt thing, vella. I promise I won't tie anyone up with it and if I do I won't make it tight! I couldn't even if I wanted to because I'm just learning the knots. Red sequin knots, oh pleeeeeeeeze.

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Oops. Did I say that out loud?

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No more egg nog for me before breakfast. I'll just take my clock now, and mainline some caffeine at the back of the room...

 

[Guest]

< raising my hand, bouncing up and down >

Me! Me! Me!

To hell with the rules of the game! I know it's not my turn and I have a fabulous clock already, but puh-lease let me have the red sequin belt thing, vella. I promise I won't tie anyone up with it and if I do I won't make it tight! I couldn't even if I wanted to because I'm just learning the knots. Red sequin knots, oh pleeeeeeeeze.

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Oops. Did I say that out loud?

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No more egg nog for me before breakfast. I'll just take my clock now, and mainline some caffeine at the back of the room...

no way chickie...once you call a gift you gatta take it...house rules!

 

[shereads]

no way chickie...once you call a gift you gatta take it...house rules!

The integrity of the thread is at stake, vella. I can't go home with two gifts, and certainly not the two best gifts. The clock is mine.

Let the sparkly sequins go to someone who deserves them...Someone who can tie a square knot that doesn't look like a nest of snakes.

 

[Guest]

The integrity of the thread is at stake, vella. I can't go home with two gifts, and certainly not the two best gifts. The clock is mine.

Let the sparkly sequins go to someone who deserves them...Someone who can tie a square knot that doesn't look like a nest of snakes.

i understand your conumdrum, lovie... ofcourse you must take the clock.
patience grasshoppah...time and practise is the key to good knot tying...just wait till you get to the monkey's fist....that one's a buggah.

 

[shereads]

i understand your conumdrum, lovie... ofcourse you must take the clock.
patience grasshoppah...time and practise is the key to good knot tying...just wait till you get to the monkey's fist....that one's a buggah.

You know those rolls of shiny black tape? Easy to use, gratifying to look at - but if you plan to use it in a tense situation, keep some clothes on and be ready to run for the nearest exit. If somebody gets riled up enough, he might as well be tied to that chair with Kleenex.




This clock won't stop playing carols.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I've got a matched set of two of the most fuck-ugly coffee mugs you've ever seen.

Someone must have heard that I was into sailing ships because these seems to be hand painted with the standard gag-inducing scene of a sailboat careening past a pictureque lighthouse with those little V-shaped seagulls in the air and all that stuff. I'm sure that if you could see the people on the boat, they'd be holding on to the rigging with both hands and retching their guts out over the side.

The mugs are so over-sized they make you feel like you're drinking out of a waste-paper basket, and hold so much coffee that the stuff is cold and you're sick of it before you're finished. They're painted suicidal-depression gray on the outside, and 'are-these-mugs-really-clean?' brown on the inside.

It's hard to believe that something as simple as a coffee mug can be so violently wrong on so many levels (did I mention the curved handles that slide through your fingers?) but there you go. Enjoy them, and Merry fucking Christmas.

---Zoot

 

[shereads]

It's hard to believe that something as simple as a coffee mug can be so violently wrong on so many levels (did I mention the curved handles that slide through your fingers?) but there you go. Enjoy them, and Merry fucking Christmas.

---Zoot

God bless us, every one!

 

[SensualCealy]

I am offering up my Moo-moo, kind of pomagranite purple, olive green and golds. A tres sexy 'v' neck with billowy sleaves, made of 100% polyester.
A must for the over 70 Crowd!!!!
Nothing could possibly be worse!
C

 

[lucky-E-leven]

I am offering up my Moo-moo, kind of pomagranite purple, olive green and golds. A tres sexy 'v' neck with billowy sleaves, made of 100% polyester.
A must for the over 70 Crowd!!!!
Nothing could possibly be worse!
C

Thread Killer!

Awww, fuck it. I kinda wanted the red sequin disco belt, but I suppose I'm stuck with the mu-mu. No biggee. I need something to hand out at next year's Chinese Christmas.

The next lucky poster will receive the ever-entertaining 'Remote Control Finger Flipper' that my brother-in-law got me last year. He only shops at Spencer Gifts and it's a riot to set on the bar between the kitchen and the living room. Every time your husband whines that there are dishes in the sink or he can't find the ketchup that sits at eye-level, on the front of the shelf, three inches from his nose...all you need to do is hit the 'Fuck-You' button on your remote and he will instantly receive the finger. You needn't move from your cozy spot under the blanket in the corner of the couch as you tune out football and continue reading your book.



~lucky