As I’ve written before, I love graphic and industrial design.
I surf design websites all the time and blog often about stuff I find. The power of a good design, and ironically enough a poor one, is that it is thought and/or emotion-provoking. I love how I can look at a piece and feel inspired to write a bunch of paragraphs to describe my reaction.
Then again, every once in a while, all I can think to say is that the design in question, like this one, is pure genius:
In all of my 46 years as a Jew, I have never had a night like I had last night, the first night of Chanukah 2010 5771.
After we lit the candles, the dreidels were brought out and we taught our Japanese homestay student, Shuichi, how to play the game. We started playing, and it was rather uneventful for the first few rounds. I tried a variety of dreidels — we have quite the collection — and then I got two gimmels in a row with the same dreidel. (Not sure what a dreidel or a gimmel is? Read about it here.)
Everyone was amazed, myself included.
And so, on the next turn, I stayed with the same dreidel and got a third gimmel in a row!
Unheard of! Absurd!
And it went on and on and on. The other players tried to use the same dreidel on their turns and got nothing but nun, hay, and shin, but each time I spun that baby it was gimmel, gimmel, gimmel. I lost track after a dozen or so in a row…
…and slowly the excitement started to subside. What started out as another apparent Chanukah miracle to be celebrated gradually deteriorated into a lose-fest for everyone but me.
As my trusty dreidel eventually failed me, it failed in the biggest way, not with a hay or nun, but a shin, and without any discussion everyone started to clean up. The game was over.
It’s lonely being the Dreidel Master. 
