If you live in the city and you're like me, you hate Christmas season for several reasons:
a. The subway runs extra slow, is extra-cramped because of giant coats, and the bum on the seat next to you smells not only of brandy, BO, American Spirit cigarettes, and failure, but also of a new "holiday" stink that is very much like (but is certainly not) figgy pudding
b. While walking down the sidewalk, you have to dodge not only the asshole raising money for The Sierra Club, the jackoff hawking for Greenpeace, the douchenozzle waving his clipboard and lamenting the lives of the families in Darfur, and the twat in the "Feed the Children" jacket, but there are now asshats with bells and giant red bins trying to steal your sushi change to give to the Salvation Army. (Who the flying hell is the Salvation Army, anyway? Have they done anything since "Guys and Dolls"? Yeah, Follow this Fold, you jingly dicktard.)
c. Paul McCartey's "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime" song. Holy...fucking...shit. Why this is the go-to song for department store holiday play, I have no idea. Most Christmas songs are fine until you've heard them enough times while shopping that you just get kinda irked. With this one, though, the first verse is enough to get me to beat the store giftwrap lady to death with a cast-iron elf in the hopes that the county lockup won't have a muzak.
d. Finally, if you're like me, you hate, hate, hate, HATE holiday shopping. There are these jerkoffs who actually get to Best Buy at 2am the day after Thanksgiving to save 25% off an Ipod as a gift for their kid. Have fun freezing your nuts off in your lawnchair, ya mook. I'm gonna sleep in, go online, pay full price, and have that Ipod shipped to my house already giftwrapped with a To/From card attached.
That brings me to the real topic of this post (the first in 2 months- woohoo!): Amazon.com. There really isn't anything you can't find at that site while holiday shopping. Mom's into macrame? Get her a macrame book, macrame DVD, macrame toaster cozy, and the Macrame Hero Wii game. Dad's into fishing? Get him the Best of Bassmasater DVD series, one of those stupid singing fish wall decorations, and a 5-pound giftpack of smoked Alaska salmon. Brother's a foot fetishist? Get him the 100 Years of Podiatry textbook, a pair of those socks with compartments for each of the toes, and a 36-inch cherrywood foot sculpture from Belize. Then cut off relations with your brother- he's a fucking freak.
While it's easy to find great stuff at that site, there's also a whole lot of useless crap that no one in their right mind would ever want. If you are shopping for the perfect gift for me this holiday season, please do not (under any circumstance) buy me any of the products below.
1. "Identifying Wood: Accurate Results with Simple Tools" by R. Bruce Hoadly
I'm not knocking ol' R. Bruce's hobby, but how the hell did he fill 240 pages with wood-identifying tips? If you're as curious as I was about the results of his "wood research" pictured on the front cover, it can be located on page 71. His findings? "Yup, that's wood."
2. Katutjatut Throat Singing CD with Alacie Tullaugaq and Lucy Amarualik
Everyone knows that Lucy Amarualik was waaay better when she was still fronting Inuit Insanity, the Eskimo thrash-metal band. Now that they broke up (best Behind the Music EVER!), she's whoring with Alacie Tullaugaq. Honestly, when's the last time Alacie Tullaugaq had a hit? Seriously- I'm asking. Can you name ONE? Poor Lucy- such a sellout.
3. The Elvis dog costume
Anyone who buys this for their dog deserves to be (in the following order):
1. Dragged outside to the driveway in front of all the neighbors
2. Beaten unconscious with a rubber hose
3. Brought to the hospital
4. Nursed back to health over several grueling months of rehab
5. Brought back home amongst much fanfare and mylar balloons
6. Pushed in their wheelchair out into the driveway in front of all the neighbors
7. Beaten unconscious with a heavier rubber hose
4. The Monkey King ceramic statue
This combines three of my greatest fears: anthropomorphic apes, Magi, and parachute pants.
5. Constipation and Ano-Rectal Insufficiency- Falk Symposium (Kindle Edition)
I have nothing against the Kindle Edition per se, but Amazon is charging $183.20 for this, and I scored my copy of Constipation and Ano-Rectal Insufficiency at Brattle Books for $65- suck on THAT, Falk Symposium!
I hope this has given you an idea of horrible gift choices for me that you can keep off your shopping list. I'd be happy to list more, but my neighbor just started playing "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime", and I have to locate my ski-mask and aluminum bat. Fucking Paul McCartney.
3 comments:
Dude, if you were back in Seattle, you'd have to be dealing with your old buddies from WashPIRG, in addition to the Greenpeace and Sierra Club people. I often just turn up my Ipod and pretend I can't hear them.
It's not nice to make fun: alot of us can't really identify wood when we see it. You're mean.
i was going to get the monkey king statue...but a far better version: american commando. instead of an egg and a walking stick he's holding a grenade and an M-14 with laser scope. it's southern asia gone americana with fury.
and Alacie Tullaugaq's tenth track, "Nunaqatigingitut," would make springstein cry it's so good.
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