(If you'd like to understand the high-tech toilet pictured left, you'll have to skip ahead to the end of the post.)
Whenever I do a giveaway, I always choose the winner by using the random number generator. Which is fair, but no fun. So sometimes when the entries are particularly amusing, I like to do something I call a "comment competition". This means that after I award the main prize randomly, I pit the funniest comments against each other for a secondary prize.
The giveaway in question is a $300 Beso Shopping Spree. To enter, everyone had to tell me their BEST OR WORST GIFT EVER.
First things first. The winner (selected randomly) of the shopping spree is…
JEN!
I'm sure there is more than one JEN so to differentiate, this is the JEN who got a "Dating for Dummies" book from her then boyfriend, now husband.
Congratulations! You can now tell him that gift giving is way more successful when he is not involved.
Now I'm going to give the people who wrote the ten best comments for "WORST GIFT" an opportunity to win an "AWESOME GIFT" so they don't get screwed over twice. Everyone gets to vote for their favorite and the winner will be announced this Friday, Dec 9th.
What's the awesome gift?
The winner of the WORST GIFT EVER will get to transform one of their personal photos into a beautiful, high quality 11X14 canvas photo print ($44) from MyPix2Canvas.com (pictured right).
Beats a "Dating for Dummies" book, right?
THE 10 CONTENDERS FOR "WORST GIFT EVER"
Patricia:
A GARBAGE CAN from my husband. Granted, we needed a new one and this was the stainless steel fancy model but I was still taken aback. I figured there would be something more inside. There was. Garbage bags.
Taylor:
An aphrodisiac gift basket (chocolate, massage oil, oysters etc) and a breast milk pump from my mother-in-law. We were not even trying to get pregnant and I am allergic to shellfish! She either really wanted a grandchild or she secretly wants to kill me.
Elle:
The WORST birthday gift I ever got was a "Make Your Own Jerky Kit" from a friend. I've been a freaking vegetarian for over 10 years.
Hubby went to work early. I woke up to find a USED paper plate on the counter with HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WE ARE OUT OF TOILET PAPER scrawled on it. For real.
Mary:
My dad has a Corvette restoration business. For as long as I could remember, he promised me and my twin sister a Corvette for our 16th birthday. When the day finally arrived, we ripped open our presents and sure enough, inside each box was a General Motors key on a Corvette keychain. When we arrived at the shop, he started laughing. Those keys did belong to a Corvette, but the car was in pieces. I spent the better part of the next year…nights, weekends and the summer, working in my Dad's shop putting that car together.
Jessica:
Worst gift ever was a Christmas gift. We were at the house of a "odd" relative and I received a gift basket of two mis-matched stemmed glasses, a coupon to olive garden (not a gift certificate but a coupon), and a bag of dried split peas. Ask my husband for verification – it was addressed to the both of us.
Samantha:
For my sweet sixteen, my extremely responsible parents got me a fireproof document safe, instead of the car I was expecting. Talk about a let down.
My husband bought me a bumper. Really, a bumper for my car "in case I ever needed a spare bumper". It sat in the center of our living room for 6 months until I traded in the car and threw in the bumper.
By far the worst birthday gift I ever received was from a student when I taught 6th grade – it was a glass figurine of a bear ice-skating. The bad part? He was missing a leg.
Jennifer:
The worst b-day present? News my parents were getting a divorce followed by cake and ice cream on my sweet sixteen. When they called me to come downstairs, I thought they were going to give me a Volkswagen Cabriolet.
FYI, if I was allowed to enter this competition, I would trounce you all. The worst gift I ever recieved was a mechanical toilet seat called the "Clean Butt" from my father. Apparently, he had tried the magical "Clean Butt" at a friend's house and loved it so much that he decided to invest in the company. Cue each of our family members receiving an "electronic bidet spa" for the holidays.
The worst part was that my father left it with my doorman as a surprise. In an unwrapped box. The packaging had a huge photo of the high-tech toilet seat with the words "Clean Butt" written across it and the slogan "The ultimate cleansing machine for the posterior".
Think that's bad enough?
My doorman handed it to me as I entered the building with my brand new boyfriend.
His name was Mike.
It's amazing he's still here.
Hahahahaha, OMG such terrible gifts. It totally trounced the worst gift I got – a gizmo to keep my mouse wires in check. As in computer mouse.
I would totally want one of those! Lucky dog… I’ll trade you one paint ball to the behind for your mouse wrangler.
Try a laptop!
Your surprise paintball party was pretty bad but a legless glass ice-skating bear beat it out- sorry!
Shoot! I though my eye drops and manual toothbrush for my bday was a winner 🙂 guess my husbands gift wasn’t so bad after all?
Super late to the party on this one, but my paternal grandmother gave my Mom a bottle of dried parsley as a Christmas gift, which coincided with her wedding (a Christmas wedding – so basically she was giving her first gift to her new daughter-in-law). Her comment was “I saw you were out of it.”
There were really so many bad ones it was hard to choose. I narrowed it down to like twenty (of which you were a part of) and then had my sister and mom help pick. The can of cashews and Abraham Lincoln’s glass blown head didn’t make it on there either!
So wait. Is dried parsley used for energy or something?
I hope you kept the Clean Butt to give to Mazzy on Prom Night or something.
Love it.
Much better than the KY Jelly I got in my Christmas stocking from my mother-in-law.
(Tingling massage gel. Right.)
Seriously? That’s HORRIBLE! How do you spend the day with someone after that?
Cannot stop laughing over your worst gift story. Oh wow.
I wish I had seen this earlier, but I just have to share.
For my birthday one year, my boyfriend (long since ex) bought me….a MOP. A regular old sponge mop. Which sure, we needed but, how cheap? And to make it better he taped a $25 gift certificate TO THE MALL to it. Not to a store in particular, and not to a good mall, a crappy local mall.
He had enough money to at least buy me 1 nice item to go along with this. I was so bummed, and I literally thought it was a gag gift until I never got another one :S
They all made me laugh until I got to yours, Ilana. Then I howled. That is RIDICULOUS.
Ha ha, he probably married you for the toilet. I’m still laughing at my having found and returned $10,000.00 to someone and recieving a small box of grocery store chocolates!
Trying your dads cyber-toilet was one of the formative moments of my life.
Corvette in a Billion Pieces is just plain awesome! Sorry!
Heck the legless bear and Honest Abe head is way worse. My parents were awesome about the party though. The thought was in the right place. the strategically aimed paintball to the deriare was not.
Terrible gifts are the best (when they aren’t to me!)
I think the pieces of Corvette is awesome! I mean, in the end you got a Corvette and in the meantime you got to build a car with your dad? I would love that!
My daughter just gave me a gift this morning while we were waiting for our car to be fixed. It’s wrapped in her diaper in their trash right now.
Having to build your own Corvette is awesome! I mean, I would’ve been pissed at the time for sure, but from a more enlightened and mature perspective, I think that’s a pretty damn good gift – you get a car and learn some life lessons about responsibility and self-entitlement all at the same time.
I was horrified by the aphrodisiac basket and breast pump. That right there is a mother-in-law from hell.
I have to agree that the Corvette gift was actually awesome, I would have loved something like that.
I got excited when I saw Jen, then realized I never got around to entering because my iphone doesn’t like your site!
I have two worst gifts, the first one was the umbrella I got for my 12th birthday, that was all I got and my heart was literally broken (I don’t think I ever really forgave my parents for that).
Second is the half-eaten open jar of biscotti someone gave us as a wedding gift. Which came with an unwrapped, open display box of teabags (the kind they bring you in a fancy place so you can choose your own flavor). We’re pretty sure they robbed the hotel’s coffee stand on the way in.
You are the best for creating the contest! And Beso too, of course!!! Thanks again!!!
Late to respond – but no – just cooking. It’s a spice. Not even a good one.
Hey, friends You have done beautiful task. Mother’ day comes one time in a year so I celebrate this festival with my mother I love the picture, that’s in your post.
Lo. 2 funny..i rember one mothers day my brother and sister @like 8yrs old decided 2 give my mom these plastic spoons that they had broken the handle part off& had taped a few popsicle sticks in its place..