Online Holiday Gift Guide!

NOTE: This post is rated R for coarse humor and pervasive profanity.

Introduction

It’s gift-giving time! Let’s go gifting! Or better yet, let’s stay at home in our fuzzy slippers and gift from here! Then we won’t even have to touch the godawful shit we’re foisting on friends and family! All we gotta do is pay! We don’t even have to come up with our own ideas, because it’s not the thought that counts—it’s the money! So here is my online gift guide … all the crap you wouldn’t want for yourself but will gladly—for some reason—give to others!

How about a Keurig?

A Keurig coffeemaker is the gift that says, “I know you can’t figure out coffee filters, French presses, Mr. Coffee, or any other normal way of making coffee!” For the hapless, clueless, or just plain lazy, here’s another giant hunk of single-purpose plastic appliance—the Death Star of coffeemakers—to clutter up that kitchen counter!

It even takes little cartridge pods so your loved one can create maximum waste! And when he loads the pod he can pretend he’s slapping a magazine into some hi-tech weapon! But wait, there’s more! Your lucky recipient doesn’t have to make do with plain old coffee: with specialty K-Cup pods he can enjoy blueberry, caramel vanilla, and even French-toast flavored beverages, and pretend he’s one of those loser kids in the Willy Wonka movie! And that’s not all: this little coffee-brewing jewel comes with a 30” cord so if your gift recipient still manages to screw up his coffee—perhaps by running out of K-Cup pods—he can just strangle himself!

Wow, a nostalgic candle!

Look, you can send that former Texan in your life a fabulous scented candle that says “homesick” on it! That way his friends will know he wishes he still lived there instead of wherever he ended up! Kind of like celebrating the lack of agency in his life!

But it’s not just a statement, it’s an actual candle! It smells like dark leather, fresh pine, fish bones, thick lemon slices (which smell different from thin lemon slices for some reason), combined with cyclamen and a touch of sage to summon the big, bold aura of the Lone Star State! And you what else? Since a big Texan man might think it’s a bit wussy to have a fancy candle in his home, it also smells a lot like an old dried-out cow pie! But just in case that seems kind of dirt-baggy, the label informs guests that this candle is “Made in small batches in the USA!” Holy shit, this big-hearted, big-hatted dude is gonna love it! It’s the elegant home furnishing that says “Don’t mess with Texas!”

Internet-connected, voice-activated smoke detector!

This hot little number is for that special person who is good and fed up with standard smoke alarms that, when they go on the blink—and they always do—are impossible to silence. They shriek and howl, as does anybody in earshot, and no little button can ever stop the sound, nothing can, not until you’ve clawed at the alarm, banged on it, and eventually ripped it out of the ceiling, taking those stupid little molly-bolts and a bunch of drywall with it, and smashed it on the floor. Well, those days are finally over for the person lucky enough to be on your gift list! Finally, when this thing goes off—announcing in a computer voice (that is somehow even more excruciating than the standard shrieking) exactly what dangerous vapor is supposedly threatening her home—she just can scream at it, “ALEXA: SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

Macho coffee!

Give your boyfriend, husband, father, or son the gift that says, “I’m all about turning every aspect of my life into a pissing contest!” It’s badass coffee in a black package with a daring skull-and-crossbones logo!

And in case that’s not enough to impress his guests, it even has a warning label on the back!

Oh my god, this shit could kill somebody who isn’t ready for a big, bold taste and gobs of caffeine! And you know what? If you bought this poor bastard a Keurig coffeemaker last year and he’s still trying to fish his male ego out of the gutter, this strong-ass coffee will be perfect!

Electric roller skates that are also Segways!

You know that nerdy friend who actually wanted a Segway, but couldn’t afford one? And wanted the Google Glass but couldn’t get on the list? The friend who wishes there was a such thing as a wireless Internet-connected fanny pack? Well guess what? Segway makes “Electric Hovershoes” which are like roller skates you get to stand on instead of wearing! And they’re electric! And they have headlights and taillights!

These things are so fucking weird your friend will think they’re a hoax, until he tries them! Who’s laughing now!? He’ll be so thrilled he’ll almost die, until he finds out you don’t have a pair yourself so he’ll have to go skating all by his lonesome! But guess what? That’s just more babes for him! Win-win!

The Sweetgrass Boxed Set!

That sensitive—and literary—soul in your life probably can’t get enough books about humility, our sacred earth, and how to rebuild our relationships with plants, animals, and humans alike, learning from our plant-based elders. She also can’t get enough beautiful words like “meadow” and “compassion.” So give her the gift of sweetgrass—a treasure trove of books on the subject!

Included are Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Road Back to Sweetgrass: A Novel by Linda LeGarde Grover, Sweetgrass by Jan Hudson, Sweetgrass Basket by Marlene Carvell, Sweetgrass by Mary Alice Monroe, and—just for the hell of it—Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything by Elizabeth Gilbert! And they’re all packaged up in a beautiful faux-sweetgrass box lined with—you guessed it!—satin.

Camouflage bedding!

There’s a certain kind of man in your life who doesn’t have the time—or the headspace—for humility, for our sacred earth, for rebuilding relationships, or for plant-based elders. He’s a glowering, brooding type … and you know what he’s brooding about? Security. Protection. He doesn’t pretend for a minute that there aren’t threats—very real threats, clear and present dangers—and being prepared for them always falls to him since the little woman has her head in the clouds over satin-lined gift boxes and journeys to authenticity and belonging, shit like that. Who’s gonna keep this family safe during the most vulnerable time—when everybody’s lying in bed, fast asleep? Well, those dangerous would-be burglars and kidnappers will have to find this family first, am I right? And just try it with these badass camouflage bed sheets.

And guess what? If that intruder bastard’s tactical flashlight does foil the camo, there’s another little surprise in store: this comforter is an American fucking flag! Just so that bitch-ass punk knows what kind of patriot he’s dealing with! If he doesn’t just absolutely shit himself on the spot, he must be blind or something!

Sloth tea infuser!

There’s nothing worse than giving a humdrum gift, right? It’s always better to give your loved one something that causes utter bewilderment. Imagine your mirth when the lucky recipient unwraps this flabby figurine and resists the urge to blurt out, “What the hell is it?!” Well, she’ll figure it out. It’s a (pretend) sloth that your friend or cousin fills with her favorite loose tea and hangs on the end of her mug—or better, on the edge of her glass, so she can watch the lazy mammal appear to pee in her hot water!

And not to worry, this clever little sloth is made of food-safe, BPA-free silicone so it’s soft, non-toxic, and (obviously) tasteless! Your friend can stop worrying about teabags clogging up landfills or compost bins … clean-up is a cinch! She just discards the loose tea leaves, and hell, while she’s at it, the whole damn sloth as well! Throw its arboreal ass out into the street!

Star Wars cookbook!

The perfect gift for that rare, rare breed: the Star Wars fanatic who knows how to cook, or wants to learn! Inspired by Disneyland and the almost incomprehensibly venal cynicism of Hollywood, this actual hardback book is full of recipes for such made-up non-foods as Roasted Kajaka Root, Fried Endorian Tip-Yip, and Parwan Nutricakes.

The recipient’s dinner guests will have no basis to evaluate the authenticity of these dishes, so it’s a can’t-lose proposition! Maybe you’ll get invited over for Laser-Fried Deep Space Oysters (yes, that does mean wookie testicles)!

Freak his shit out!

OMG, do you have one of those boyfriends who’s totally insensitive about others’ crippling emotional problems? The kind of guy who learns that a mutual friend is in therapy and says something coarse about it behind the person’s back, like “Get a backbone”? Well, no time like the holidays to turn the tables! Get that callous motherfucker a pair of custom-printed boxers with your face right in the crotch! 

He’ll be freaking out and sweating bullets even before you insist, quite forcefully, that he put them on! Drag him over to the mirror and say something shocking like, “Look babe, you’ve got me where you want me!” Hold his damn eyelids open like in A Clockwork Orange and make him look at that shit!

When he stammers out some incredulous protest, you’ll be like, “What’s the matter, honey? Don’t you like them?” He’ll be so emotionally shattered he’ll lose his sex drive altogether! He’ll wake up in the night screaming! And then you break up with that insensitive prick! His New Year’s Resolution will be to try to put the pieces of his psyche back together!

Incongruous t-shirt!

Everyone on your list could use a new t-shirt—and this isn’t just any t-shirt. It says “Unicorns are born in July” on it because, well, God, who the hell knows? I guess that’s kind of the point, right? Unless I’m missing something? Damn, this thing is perfect!

Imagine your joy watching that friend, daughter, or sister do the math, trying to figure out when exactly those unicorn parents had sex to give birth in July. Except how long does a unicorn gestate? That’s an easy one—340 days!

Now, you might think this gift is only appropriate for someone born in July who identifies as a unicorn, right? Wrong! Everyone else can wear this shirt ironically!

Vanity beard comb!

If your man not only has a beard that’s so long he has to comb it, but is willing to actually take time doing this, let’s face it: chances are he’s a bit of a narcissist. But that doesn’t mean he’s not vain, too! Make sure you stroke his ego along with his beard, with this beautiful walnut-wood beard comb engraved with “DANGEROUS MAN.”

Yes, he’s not only a hipster, but he’s a bit of a rogue! Kind of a blackguard, really, and not above a bit of savagery—you gotta keep an eye on him! This little folding comb suggests those straight razors that certain murderers like to cut throats with, but don’t worry, these teeth don’t bite! Your man’s beard has never been so soft—and his heart so hard! Are you getting hot yet?

Just a shit-ton of batteries!

You know what’s harder than finding the perfect gift? Charging those stupid nickel-metal hydride batteries! What a pain in the ass. Those stupid chargers with the little colored lights that make no sense—like, why does it light up green when I plug it in, when I’m pretty sure these batteries are dead? Does the light go out when they’re charged, or does this mean the battery is already charged? Is this charger fucking stupid? Well guess what? Your lucky friend or family member doesn’t have to worry about that anymore, because you just gave him a shit-ton of old-school, single-use batteries!

And it’s all guilt-free because he didn’t choose them and it’s too late now to worry about it! For once he won’t be secretly bummed about his gift and thinking, “What am I gonna do with this?” With this inarguably useful gift, you’ll be a damned hero!

Note

In case you’re wondering, all of the above are real products except the Braiding Sweetgrass Boxed Set. All the books listed are real but you can’t actually get them in a boxed set (at least, not yet).

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The albertnet Christmas Guide

After some semantic housekeeping, I’ll provide herein my recommendations on how to get the very most out of your Christmas, or at least have a good laugh at the holiday’s expense.

Some semantic housekeeping

You might bristle at—or, conversely, rejoice in—my use of the word “Christmas” as opposed to “the holidays.” Obviously this is a loaded issue, and I gave it some thought. I decided on “Christmas” because it has become the generic term for the December 25 holiday that most of the people I know make the biggest fuss over. I’m using the term to mean something pretty specific: the day on which most Americans open gifts that are arranged beneath a tree that everybody calls a Christmas tree. I am aware that there are plenty of other holiday traditions but I’m too ignorant to blog intelligently about them.

Please don’t construe this as me prioritizing Christmas over any other cultural or religious tradition. For most of us, Christmas is not primarily a religious holiday. Almost everybody exchanges Christmas gifts but how many actually attend a special Mass? My family never did, growing up. Words like “stocking,” “present,” “candy,” and “get” were on everybody’s tongues but we never uttered “Eucharist,” “Mass, “liturgy,” or “Holy Communion.” Sure, we all pretend this holiday is about more than just giving, getting, and eating, but generally any putatively deeper meaning is just tacked on for good form. (It’s kind of like how everybody had to mourn Mother Theresa’s death simply because they’d so recently made such a fuss over Princess Diana’s.)

So, no—this post isn’t about any so-called War on Christmas or on pretensions of deep meaning. It’s about the typical Christmas holiday as my family and friends have traditionally experienced it: i.e., conspicuous consumption.

The best gift ideas

The real sweet spot for Christmas is when you’re kid and aren’t expected to give anyone anything. You just get, get, get and it’s awesome. Then you gradually have to start thinking of others, maybe you crudely craft some gifts for your parents (like a pottery ashtray even though they don’t smoke), and eventually you buy a few things for a few people, and this escalates over the years. Then, if you’re lucky enough to become a parent, the whole thing shifts completely and you have to give, give, give. It does help when the kids write cute letters to Santa, like this one.

I confess: I really don’t enjoy gift-giving. It’s not that I’m stingy; I’m actually fairly generous with my time and money. (Not that you should ask for any … isn’t this free blog enough?) My problem is the inefficiency of the whole gift-giving affair: how seldom a present actually pleases the recipient. I recently saw a Nordstrom ad on the back cover of a magazine that really annoyed me. “LET’S GO GIFTING!” it says, showing all these impossibly hip, happy, and exhilarated people clutching gift-wrapped packages. One of them is literally wearing heart-shaped glasses.

Look, Nordsters, if you find gifting that thrilling you’re obviously in the thrall of the giant retail machine and it’s having its way with you. Choosing a gift should be a careful, sober thing. If you’re snatching things up impulsively enough to keep your shopping companions from getting bored, you’re moving too fast. Your approach is as naively impossible and inappropriate as heart-shaped glasses. I don’t want to seem like a scrooge or anything, but I would really, really enjoy crushing those glasses under my boot.

I once got caught up in that let’s-go-gifting “spirit.” It was awful. I came into some money (something like $100) right before Christmas in 1983 and my brothers and I went on a spree. I remember my brother Geoff being totally enchanted by a wristwatch because it actually ticked. So what? It’s not like all watches were digital back then. But it was like entrapment: he was enchanted, so we had to pitch in and buy it for him. My brother Max and I somehow ended up buying each other the Police album “Synchronicity” so we ended up having it on both record and tape. It wasn’t until we got home that I realized how stupid that was. It’s not like we couldn’t have made a tape from the record and saved some damn money.

Buying gifts is hard, which I know because when I do receive one, half the time I don’t like it. And when I give one, the odds are even worse. Our poor choices demonstrate how little we really know our loved ones. My dad usually bought me books written by well-meaning environmentalists, spiritual healers, naturalists, etc. who just can’t write well. The book would begin with something like, “In winter, when the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, this is the time for storytelling.” I’ve tried to read these books and I just can’t. My literary standards are far too high.

Once my dad sent my wife some silver earrings. She opened the box, said, “How nice,” and then immediately turned to my sister-in-law and said, “You want ‘em?” She meant it. They were perfectly nice earrings (and probably expensive) but not her taste.

My picks for my dad weren’t much better. When I was like 12 I bought him a bike mirror. Of course this was a stupid idea. My dad was enough of a nerd for fenders and racks, but not for a mirror. He was clearly at a loss for what to say, so he said nothing. After a couple of weeks he still hadn’t mounted it to his handlebar so I asked him about it. “Oh, I have another use for it,” he said, though I never discovered what this was. He may have used it to line a landfill.

In college I bought my dad a UC Berkeley sweatshirt, which I thought he’d be chuffed to bits about, what with us having the same alma mater and all. But he never wore it. Had I thought about this, I’d have realized I’d never seen him in a sweatshirt at all. They were, I came to understand, beneath his dignity. When I cleaned out his house a year ago I half-expected to find that sweatshirt but I guess he got rid of it … possibly right away.

When gifts really go wrong it’s when the thought (i.e., what counts) doesn’t demonstrate enough love. In the Christmas of 1977, I received the “Star Wars” soundtrack (a two-record album). My brother Max only got a “Star Wars” calendar, which a) didn’t cost as much, and b) was only good for a year. Never mind that we had only one record player in the house, meaning he could hear this album as often as I could. He was hurt, and said so. The first time I played the record, I spied him sadly tracing his finger over a picture in his calendar as he listened—his face a perfect picture of forlornness—to “Lieia’s Theme.” He really did believe that this disparity in generosity meant my parents loved me more. This happened to be true, but that’s not the point. (Max, if you’re reading this: that was a joke, okay?)

So the best gift idea, if you can swing it, is the no-gifting pact. I’ve had this pact with my wife since our kids were born, and if it’s not my favorite thing about Christmas, it’s at least a huge relief. We’d both much rather pick out something really nice for each other’s birthdays, when we aren’t trying to please all our relatives at once. (This year I extended the no-gift pact to my brother Bryan and his family. His kids outnumber ours by 4.5 to 1 so this is just good economics.)

The second-best gift idea is the white elephant. If the whole point is for the choice to be awful, it’s hard to go wrong! And sometimes they really work out. Check out this simply awful “inspirational” wall hanging:

Turns out if you flip it over it makes a nice tray for holding miscellaneous doodads!

The best part is that if I ever throw up on it, or the cat pees in it, or we just decide we suddenly hate it and it has to go, I don’t have to feel bad that a friend or family member wasted any money on it.

The best place for Christmas shopping

If you head to the mall for Christmas shopping, you’re going to be immersed in a lot of the all-together-now, isn’t-this-season-exciting bullshit that the retail industry hopes will loosen your purse strings. You’ll also have to hear a lot of really awful holiday music. You might even have to dodge a lotion sniper. None of this is pleasant.

If you head to a thrift store like Goodwill, you’ll still have to endure the awful music, but you’ll avoid crowds and enjoy a much more subdued, almost moribund atmosphere. Goodwill is a great reminder of the life cycle of a consumer good: from department store to home to garage to here. And when you’ve had holiday cheer practically forced on you from every other direction, the depressed aura of a thrift store is actually kind of refreshing.

My wife and I headed over to Goodwill yesterday for some white elephant shopping. We scored this killer bobblehead for only four bucks:

It was brand-new, in the box, and even came with a battery. It talks, spewing madcap platitudes from the “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” sitcom. And I have just discovered that you would have to pay $38.99 for this bobblehead at Target—except they don’t even have Dennis. Nobody does! The only place I found Dennis was at the Amazon.com marketplace, offered by a third-party seller for—get this—$189! It seems to be a collector’s item! (What is wrong with people? How does this useless tchotchke appeal to anybody?)

Of course when you give white elephant gifts you always run the risk of spotting the object peeking out from a trash bin in the driveway as you leave the white elephant party. But the recipient of my Dennis bobblehead is from India, and after being initially completely nonplussed by it (and how can you explain a bobblehead?), she declared, “I like it. It is my first bobblehead. I don’t know Dennis, but I like him. I will keep this bobblehead.” I can’t remember the last time I felt so good after giving a gift.

The best Christmas treat

The problem with Christmas treats is the sheer glut of them. They all hit you at once—Toblerone, candy canes, all manner of fancy cookies, giant chocolate assortments, etc., and even though I almost never worry about my weight, I start to get disgusted with myself after about the ten thousandth calorie. Moving on to heartier fare, the traditional turkey dinner is all well and good, but it seems so redundant with Thanksgiving barely behind us. So the better Christmas meal, in my book, is a spiral-sliced ham from Harry & David. (No, they didn’t pay me to say this.) I had this at my mom’s house one Christmas, and she sent us home with the leftovers. The way it’s pre-cut, you can just tear off hunks of it at will, no knife required. And the thing is huge. For days you can just be in a post-Christmas fog, barely functioning as a human being, subsisting on shreds of this delicious, super-salty ham. The only problem? I just found out they’re like $90! (I think my mom got ours from the factory outlet.)

Runner-up in this category is homemade eggnog. I understand this is a terribly complicated thing to make, requiring skill and a lot of time, like it has to ferment for a couple weeks or something. Ferment? Yep. Apparently the addition of bottled booze is basically cheating. You don’t really make eggnog—you brew it. I’m finding no evidence of this on the Internet but I trust my source. I can’t put homemade eggnog as the number one best treat, though, because I’ve never actually had it. I only assume it’s amazing because why else would anyone bother? This rarified, perhaps mythical creation has the added advantage of being totally unlike all the mass-made treats that, together with all the perfect gift ideas, create this fusillade of consumption that so overwhelms me every year.

It looks like I’m running out of space, or you’re running out of time, or I’m running out of ideas for next week’s post, or all of the above, so I’m going to cut this off here. Tune in next week for The albertnet Christmas Guide – Part II!

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