Kinja Deals ad fail

A Kinja Deals ad mixed in with editorial content at Lifehacker announces a low Amazon price on CRKT’s AR multi-tool. The Kinja ad shows the tool with blade open and mentions a bottle opener and three hex wrenches. I like seeing multitools in all their spidery glory, so I clicked through to the Amazon page. And I thought the tool looked a little odd, a little specialized, with small projections that had nothing to do with opening bottles or tightening hex nuts. I looked at Amazon’s list of features, which begins with “AR Cleaning Tools.” Oh. And I scrolled down to read this description:

Maintenance is the mark of a master. Designer Joe Wu knows that there’s a world of difference between the recreational shooter and the one that’s spent years honing his skill. One notable difference: proper maintenance. Joe has given the AR Tool both a compact, highly useful blade on a slip joint as well as a nine-in-one scraper tool. Built to quickly clean 12 critical surfaces of bolt components, it’s equipped to restore an AR to working order at the range or in the field. The precision-cut tool is ideal for cleaning the bolt, firing pin, carrier, and cam pin so your favorite range companion never slows down.

So the marketing arm of A.V. Club, Clickhole, Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, Lifehacker, The Onion, The Root, and The Takeout is pushing a multi-tool made for cleaning semi-automatic weapons as “a perfect everyday carry.” Imagine being the sap who buys a CRKT AR, perhaps as a gift, without understanding its purpose: “Why, thank you, Uncle Ned. Thank you, Aunt Jean. You’ve gifted me with the perfect tool for — for — cleaning an AR-15??”

That the primary use of this multi-tool is missing from the Kinja ad might be a matter of carelessness. Or it might be a matter of coyness. Either way, Kinja Deals is doing Lifehacker readers a grotesque disservice.

[There’s a tweet as well, showing only the blade. All comments on the Kinja ad are marked “pending,” including mine.]

Gerber Dime on sale

If your Ace Hardware is anything like mine, the Gerber Dime multi-tool is on clearance there, selling for $10.93 — less than half its list price of $24. The Dime is no longer listed on the Ace website, which makes me think that the clearance is more than local.

I’m a fool, or at least a semi-fool, for a multi-tool. Because you never know when you might be called on to cut a wire or tighten a screw. Be prepared!

Domestic comedy

“I can’t believe you walked past that multi-tool display.”

“Where?! WHERE?!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[Not really multi-tools, after all. Knives and flashlights. With this one, it’s probably easy to figure out who said what.]

Pocket notebook sightings

[Laird Cregar as Inspector Ed Cornell, Victor Mature as Frankie Christopher, in I Wake Up Screaming (dir. H. Bruce Humberstone, 1941). Click either image for a larger view.]

Inspector Cornell’s pocket notebook is a multi-tool in disguise, used for note-taking and for storing a hair sample from an amused suspect.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Last Laugh : The Lodger : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

[In the remake Vicki (dir. Harry Horner, 1953) Richard Boone’s Cornell is far more violent, but Cregar’s Cornell is far more frightening.]

Everyday carries

Pez, candy cigarettes, pocket flashlight, pocket magnifying glass, pocket microscope, “ID wallet,” ChapStick, Coin Caddy, bike-lock key, wallet, house key, license, car key, college ID, pen, cigarettes, lighter, grad-school ID, tobacco, rolling papers, Kryptonite-lock key, faculty ID, office keys, Wrigley’s Extra, El Pico key ring, Burt’s Bees Lip Balm, discount cards, keychain flashlight, miniature California license plate, multi-tool, iPod, iPhone, emeritus ID, Jack Black Lip Balm.

Related posts
El Pico key ring : No smoking

[“ID wallet”: made of black plastic, with plastic windows to hold a maximum of two cards. Used by grade-school secret agents to carry, uh, ID. Sequence often approximate. Thank you, Rachel, for the Jack Black. No connection to the actor. I went back and added a pen: what was I thinking?]

The American List

From A Continuous Lean, a list of 100+ companies whose stuff is made in the United States: The American List.

Fair warning: you might end up buying something. (Like, say, a Leatherman Multi-Tool.)