The REAL Low Lift Ask 2025 Gift Guide
It's real this week
QUICK PLUG FOR THE HOMIES
Imagine, if you will, that we have other friends. And that those friends have taste and are funny and are starting cool newsletters. Imagine that…..
Well—it’s real, folks. Local Legend Christiana Cromer is now writing and being funny online; subscribe above. In the spirit of Christmas, we have decided to gift some of our idiot subscribers over to them. You guys are their problem now. Have fun.
“Any sufficiently advanced... [terracotta pomegranate]... is indistinguishable from... [either a real pomegranate or a terracotta warrior, depending on the nature of the advancement]”
- Arthur C Clarke
Gifts for Mom
Santa Maria Novella Melograno in Scented Terracotta
A $95 scented terracotta pomegranate. This screams mother, due to the womb-like nature of the seed embeddings–one could reasonably compare a pomegranate seed in the white flesh to a lil zygote burrowing into a uterine lining... Make sure to tell mummy this when you give her the gift so she knows how potent the visual metaphor is.
Gifts for Dad
Santa Maria Novella Melograno in Scented Terracotta
Yuuup. Dad wants one too. Dad is crying his heart out Christmas morning until he sniffs the air and perks up a bit at the notes of rose and ylang ylang. “Wot’s this?” he inquires with not a small hint of the cheeky. “You get me sumfink smelly?” A wide grin cleaves your cheeks in twain as you pull out the custom wrapped $95 scented terracotta pomegranate you have hidden behind you and present it to the man whose loins worked a double shift just to produce you, a Marnie-from-Girls-coded dilettante content to be a forever layabout and general burden on society.
Gifts for Buddy
Santa Maria Novella Melograno in Scented Terracotta
You got a buddy too? Some kind of guy that you can text “Is this something: Mr. Focker’s Penguins.” Type of dude you can text “Yo lowkey experiencing Mandela effect rn, I thought Trump died in 2006 randomly.” Get him the pomegranate too. Spread the joy and wealth of the $95 terracotta pomegranate made from bathing the thing in essential oils for a week and then firing it to lock the scents in.
Gifts for Homie
Santa Maria Novella Melograno in Scented Terracotta
Santa Maria Novella is a company that was founded in 1281, back when Santa Maria actually was novella. Your homie should know this when appreciating the terroir of the $95 scent they developed. Wonder what kinds of smells they had in the 1200s. Can’t have been easy to get ylang ylang back then–I don’t even think the piano had made it to China!!!!!!!!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Gifts for Santa Maria Novella Melograno in Scented Terracotta
$95
Damn... 95 dollars lookin kinda fire rn. 95 dollars is straight up hitting... not a hundred, so there’s some kind of mental hook that hasn’t been reached, but you are kidding yourself if you think the total with tax is gonna be less than a hundred. Plus, the iPad at the counter is gonna prompt you to tip 20% on top of of the actual cost of the thing. And the guy working the counter (hottest gay you’ve ever seen and has absolutely no interest in your existence on this earth whatsoever) sort of gestures at it and says “it’s just going to ask you a question” TO REFER TO THE TIP SCREEN. But of course, you pay, because you’re a baseline good person. It’s table stakes for personhood these days, you know?
Nabeel’s Footnote
My scented terracotta pomegranate—gifted to me almost three years ago now by aforementioned Levantine gf—currently sits in my office on campus. Every time students come in for office hours (they don’t), they comment on how, despite my being Indian, my office smells good. I feel amazing