Well, it's been over four days since my last entry, mostly because I've been so busy at work lately. The end of the term must be near, because that's when things always seem to pick up. They say that works expands and contracts to meet a given deadline, so if you consider the end of the term a deadline, it makes perfect sense.
In any case, the weekend passed by relatively uneventfully, except that I got all my Christmas shopping done (minus a few odds and ends). As I walked through the congested mob that seemed to have spontaneously appeared wherever I was shopping at the given moment, I started to ask myself what the worst sort of gifts to buy would be. It seems to me that you could have a lot more fun giving people the absolute worst gifts possible, and video taping their reactions, than if you just got them stuff they wanted. Present for my dad? Pink sweater with a huge picture of a cat on it! We'd be watching that video for years to come!
Anyhow, that made me decide to look for articles that would describe this, and here's what I found (good old trusty MSN). Let's check it out.
15 worst holiday gift ideas
You're sweating, panicked. You're about to recycle an old gift, buy a weight-loss book for Aunt Josephine or grab the Victoria's Secret catalog. Stop! Collaborate and listen. Break the cycle of Holiday-gift-dissing.
Pressure, stress and confusion, inexplicable choices and a complete lapse of taste. Clearly you're mental. Alzheimers? No, I suspect you have something far worse: it's Holiday Gift-Shopping Syndrome! If you suffer panic attacks at the mall or you have recurring nightmares about the colossal gift gaffes you've made over the years -- you may be in need of help. Turn off your computer and go get some from somebody. Klein-Lyons lawyers seem to be really good at suing people, so you might want to go check them out as well.
Take two Advil and keep reading because the only cure is to become Jehovah's Witness and stop celebrating Christmas. This is the whole reason this religion was conceived. Barring that, you can try reading this article and spot the pitfalls early. The following primer will help you save yourself some angst -- and quite a bit of money -- by avoiding these classic gift-giving faux pas. (And your nearest and dearest will be ever-so grateful when don't try and give a fifteen pound turkey as a last minute stocking stuffer.)
If I caught Bay trying to stick a fifteen pound turkey into my stocking, I would laugh so hard I'd need new underwear, and thank her for the greatest gift ever (incontinence).
The not-so-subtle suggestion
There's nothing quite like watching the expression on people's faces when they open one of these: a set of meditation tapes for Mr. Type A, a book titled "So, you're hideously overweight, and you're also fat" for your sister, a jockstrap for your great-grandfather. Just don't be surprised if they all go in on a gift for you next year: a one-way ticket to hell where you will be devoured by daemons with nothing better to do.
I like the imagery used there. Talented author, no doubt.
The useless gadget
Everyone has someone on their list who is seemingly impervious to gift giving. It might be your boss, your dad or some other (inevitably) male relative, because I'm a raging feminist and refuse to believe that women may also be difficult to buy gifts for. Men suck! Anyhow, they appear to have no interests, no style, no obvious needs. So, you punch them really hard in the kidney, and get them a dialysis machine. Why. Why, why, why? Just buy him a block of cheese. Take it from me, a reknowed man expert - Men love a huge block of cheese.
You go raging feminist! You know men better than we know ourselves!
The lingerie trap
My husband passes along this lesson learned from hard experience: Never buy lingerie for a man, unless he has ripped out the page from the Victoria's Secret catalog and circled the exact item himself. If he opens the box and sees something that looks like a black satin hanky, it just opens up a can of worms: "Why does she want me to wear that? Doesn't she know I love big blocks of cheese? Doesn't she like me the way I am? Next thing you know she'll want me to stop eating cheese altogether! You can go from surprise to that scene in Mortal Kombat where Johnny Cage does the splits and punches Goro in the yin-yangs, in five or six mental leaps. Way too expensive on sooooo many levels.
Since Goro has two extra arms, would he be extra endowned in the genital region? Would that make it more painful to be punched in that region? These are some of the thoughts that I think were going through Johnny Cage's head right before fighting Goro.
The deadly weapon
My editor admitted that he briefly considered buying his 12-year-old son a fully automatic assault rifle (because he wanted one himself, of course). But after reflecting a bit on the damage that an assault rifle can do to unsuspecting passers-by after traveling 500 feet from his back yard to a nearby road, he decided against it. Unless you're just dying to test the limits of your liability insurance, stick to semi-automatic weapons.
And remember, you can't hug a child with nuclear arms. You need to use either your own ones, or specially made fiberglass arms.
One for the price of two
You really want that Bobbi Brown lipstick for yourself, but your wife doesn't like it when you wear lipstick. So you get it for a friend and talk yourself into believing that he will share it with you, when what you're unconsciously hoping is that he will invite you to that Kenny G concert he has tickets for, and you can gaze into each other's eyes all night. Of course, he doesn't and you end up sitting at home eating chocolate with your wife. So after Christmas you end up hitting him in the back of the head with a tonka truck you stole from some kid at a park, thus spending twice as much time in jail as if you had just stolen the Kenny G tickets from your friend in the first place.
I think the moral of the story here is that Kenny G causes serious problems in all aspects of our lives. He must be stopped!
The maroon mistake
It's almost always a bad idea to give clothing to someone when you've got god-awful style yourself. You'll invariably buy either the wrong size or the wrong color or both, because we've all seen the way you dress. Lesson: Come up with a reason to stop being this person's friend (accuse them of sleeping with your wife) so that you no longer have to buy them gifts.
Interesting. I would have just bought them clothes anyhow - the pink sweater with a huge picture of a cat on it is always fashionable and always in style.
The guilt-edged party gift
Ack! You're invited to a holiday party at the last minute and you don't have time to even pick up a bottle of wine. But you do have time to throw some ribbon around those earrings your dad gave you last year and give them to the hostess? Is this worth the thousands it will cost you in therapy bills to overcome your guilt? Consider the cost -- especially when your dad meets said hostess at your own holiday party a year later , and she's wearing your earrings. Just go back in time by running around the world really fast, like Superman did, and then buy the wine. Then, go back forward in time, so that you don't have to wait, and drink the bottle of wine to yourself. Ditch the Christmas party, it would have sucked anyhow.
More excellent advice. I give this piece of advice a nine, only because there's no mention of ZOD in it. Kneel before Zod!!!
The joke's on you
Before you spend $20 on whoopee cushion or another joke item, think about flushing that $20 down the toilet. Is that funny? We didn't think so. Is that advice helpful in picking out a gift? We didn't think so either. Maybe our next piece of advice will be less shitty.
Books by the pound
Why buy a mere book when for the same money you can give a tome? That two-thousand-page volume of the sixth installment in the life of Lyndon Johnson is MUCH more desirable than a book someone might actually read. Sure, the megabook can be read by those with more time than taste, but it can also serve as a weapon to hit you in the back of the head after you open a gift that doesn't suck. Whenever buying a gift, you must carefully analyze it and determine if it could be used as a weapon to attack you with. As a consequence, the best gifts to buy are stuffed animals, marshmallows (just get a big huge bulk bag for everyone to share), and pink sweaters with huge pictures of cats on them.
So much for there next piece of advice not sucking. Kneel before Zod!!!
Gifts made by your own $40-an-hour hands
At some point, the Spirit of Frugality will pin you to the floor and tell you that the best way to save money during the holidays is to make all your gifts by hand. Resist this impulse - you suck at crafts!! First of all, just because you don't have money doesn't mean you have talent. Second, handmade gifts always cost more than it does to just give people gifts like bags of pasta, or a jar of oatmeal.
I'm not really sure what to say about that one. Please no one buy me pasta for Christmas.
Things that can't be exchanged on this planet
Resist the urge to go down to your local gravel pit and buy your sister a bag of rocks. Rocks are difficult to exchange, and as we mentioned before, make a good weapon to hit you with after they've opened the present. If you insist on buying a bag of gravel, keep it for yourself, and use it to mug people coming out of shopping centers so that you can take their gifts. They've probably got better taste than you anyways.
Put 'em in my pocket, put 'em in my socks, I collect rocks!
Yakov Smirnov's comedy tapes
The only people that should get these tapes as a gift are people you hate. Yakov Smirnov pretty much sucks eggs, and comedy routines of his on tape are best only given as a present if you're trying to break up with someone. The one benefit to this gift is that tapes make a poor weapon, so you can walk away relatively unscathed.
Treasures from King Tut's tomb
It's always so tempting to buy from those slick museum catalogs. How can you go wrong giving a replica of something that has been rotting in a museum for centuries? But unless you know that your cousin in Denver loves Egyptian artifacts, sending him the embalmed right hand of a mummy probably isn't the best gift. Warning: If it looks tasteful, keep shopping.
I don't get that last warning at all.. If it looks tasteful, keep shopping? When do we stop shopping then? When we find something totally tasteless and tacky?
The pro-am present
My brother is a cooking maven. Ask him the difference between braise, stew and sauté and you better have a good hour on your hands. So guess what I never give my brother? Dead rats! Every hobby has a negative gift - that is to say, an anti-gift. Giving someone the anti-gift to their hobby will immediately make them dislike you. Here is a handy list of anti-gifts that you should avoid, with hobbies on the left, and their anti-gifts on the right:
Cooking : Dead rat
Shooting Lasers : Mirror
Dirt Getting : Soap
Gasoline Theft : Cigarette lighter
Interpretive Dance : Laser scope for a sniper rifle
Stay clear of these and any other anti-gifts, and your Christmas might be a success, though probably it won't really.
AND FINALLY...
The ultimate gift
Absolutely no idea what to get someone? Give them the antidote to the poison you slipped into their coffee the night before. They'll be so relieved, they'll totally forget about the attempted murder charge they could slap you with!
Whoa! If any of my friends are reading this and having a tough time figuring out what to get me, just ASK. Poisoning me is not necessary.
With these 15 rules in mind, you can easily avoid the worst gift-giving mistakes, by always giving everyone pink sweaters with huge pictures of cats on them. You'll save time. You'll save money. And you will thank me when your credit-card bill comes in January and you notice that I have stolen your identity. Hahaha!
Happy holidays losers!
What a delightful way to end the article. This is all moot anyhow, because if you've still got a lot of Christmas shopping to do, you've only got three days to get it done, and you're absolutely crazy. Even though getting the right toys and stuff on Christmas Eve is near impossible, it's definitely more peaceful in the malls on the 24th of December compared to the weekend before Christmas and the 23rd.
I think that completes everything I had to say. Christmas is almost upon us, so that means I might have extra time for updates and taking some pictures, or have less time. The holidays are weird that way - they often give you the illusion of having more time than you normally do, all the while taking up all your spare time plus more with chores, tasks, and visiting.
I've taken a bunch of pictures lately, but haven't had time to put them up into a gallery. By that, I of course mean I have had time, but have been too lazy to get it done. Sometimes, when you've been out shopping for Christmas presents all day, or staring at a computer screen at work for 8 hours, I've got no motivation left to go through pictures and write summaries for all of them. Maybe tonight will be different, since this is the relaxation week for me - no time at the gym, save for some squash, and loads of chocolate eating. I'mma get fat!
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