Suitable for Framing

Last year when I posted on giving a friend of mine a set of whiskey stones for his birthday, I had no idea that that simple act would (d)evolve into one of the most excellent Christmas traditions ever.  

Now that I look over an even older post, though, I am reminded that the actual starting point for all of this could have been making the mistake of telling him I bought an Apple product.  All of a sudden it was “sellout” this and “What’s the matter, too good for waiting for a 14-year-old Hungarian kid to finish writing driver revision 13.4.237 for your tablet made of an Etch-a-Sketch duct taped to 17 Arduino boards like the rest of us or something?” that.

For two years running, I have received a letter and a gift with the explicit instructions that the gift was not to be opened until the letter was read.  Aloud.  In front of the family.  

I, of course, do this.  This year’s letter followed the theme of last year’s.  Here it is:

Now that you are successfully climbing the ladder to the upper middle class and beyond, you will no doubt also begin the inevitable metamorphosis from a caring, thoughtful, conscientious and sincere human being full of complex character and nuances to the shallow, hollow and much maligned polar opposite that one must become in order to reach the upper class status you apparently crave.

To celebrate your embarkation on this Faustian endeavor, I present you with this gift.  Don’t look shocked.  You still have a few friends at this stage of your metamorphosis but this is most likely due to our own chronic abuse of alcohol and recreational synthetic drugs.

A classic signature of the non-creative, black-balling Freemason you are destined to become are pretentious symbols of one’s standing in society.  Nothing signifies this better than when people of your ilk take items of incredible cultural significance and reduce them to insignificant cultural bling.

The real over-achiever of narcissistic legerdemain will even find a way of incorporating a seemingly related, yet totally insulting function into this screaming symbol of your willingness to sell out everything you hold most dear for fun and profit.

With that in mind, I took the liberty of acquiring this item as a foundation of your collection.  Considering your already eroding moral compass and eroding creative skills, I assumed you were no longer capable of finding such an item yourself.

I also know that this is of no concern to you considering that you are devious enough to skillfully lie and say you purchased it yourself in that all-too-convincing manner that your wife has yet to learn to see through.

May Krankor abandon you to the Neptune Men.

Merry Christmas 

I see... Well played, sirrah. Well played.

The gift wasn’t something I wanted to chuck into a drawer someplace.  Even the bookcase seemed too out of the way for this gem... What to do...

One trip to the Dollar Store later I had a disposable plastic picture frame I could steal the glass out of (I hate keeping thin sheets of glass around the shop, so I rarely have any on hand).  I cut and dadoed a bunch of cedar to frame width since I always seem to have frames or borders or whatever to make and it’s just easier for me to do a boatload at once.  I attached a cedar shelf to the frame with pine dowels.

Skipping ahead, here is the final product, now hanging proudly in the media room:

Well, the media room off the conservatory next to the walk-in humidor...  Not the good media room, obviously.