It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Gift giving and buying season, the time to load up your car trunk with gifts and credit cards with debt, all in the same of tsotchkes that will probably end up in the Goodwill pile anyway. Ah yes, the holidays.
That also means it’s time for everyone and their mother to start making Top Ten Gift lists. Most of them are boring, predictable, or unhelpful- yeah, we all know you want diamonds. I want diamonds. Diamonds are good, as are Burberry coats (I’m looking at you, Oprah) and chocolate and all that (and to be fair, I did include some very special chocolate on this list too). But everyone has that one person on your list, the one really hard to buy for person, and most of the time you end up stumped when looking for something Truly Unique and giving them a gift card. So, in order to help you along and ensure they have a present to open, I have scoured the internet high and low to offer you, my dear friends, the Ultimate Gift List For That One Person you Don’t Know What to Do With (tm.) I made sure to find a variety of prices and types of gifts, from extravagant to cheap and tacky, so you’ll be sure to find just the right thing.
1. For the slovenly brother- you know, the one who changes his bed sheets twice a year or when they stand up on their own: The Butt/Face Towel. He may be a slob, but at least he isn’t drying his face with material marinated in old butt-water.
2. For the grandparent who just doesn’t get that no one likes garden gnomes: The Toboggan Gnome-Be-Gone Sculpture. Her eyes are old and bad so all she will see is that you thoughtfully purchased her one of her beloved garden gnomes, and won’t even notice the scary anime monster-looking things that are apparently leading it to its messy demise.
3. For the accident prone office bee: The Staple Free Stapler. In sixth grade, I accidentally stapled my hand. Those little buggers hurt like a mo fo, lemme tell you. This is the perfect stocking stuffer for people like me or that guy we all know who superglued his hand to the glue cap.
4. For the rich Top Gun enthusiast: The Top Gun Experience. Fightertown USA might no longer be in existence, but you can still pretend to be Maverick flipping off the Migs at warp speed. Just don’t ask for the “Goose Experience”. Hot Marines playing volleyball not included.
5. For the Christmas Story fan, the one who watches the marathon on TBS for 24 hours straight and knows all the lines and quotes it annoyingly all year (Merry Christmas kid, hooo, ho ho): The The Christmas Story Leg Lamp Ornament. It’s fra-gee-lay, it’s like a statue- yeah, statue! What a great lamp. Present them with the ornament version to spare their cohabitants from having to stage any watering can accidents.
6. For the Do-Gooder: Donate a cow. You know the one, the long haired hippie who drinks green tea and eschews Christmas because it is too, what’s that big word they always use…”materialistic”? Whatever. Here’s a cow, now shut up and buy me a Mig. (see number 4).
7. For the Veruca Salt of the family: The The Victorian Mansion Playhouse. This mansion costs more than an actual, real-live house in many parts of the country and certainly most third world countries. But if you just have $10,000 plus burning a hole in your pocket and your kid already sleeps in the Fantasy Coach, I say go for it, but don’t be surprised if you wake up one day to find a long lost in-law shacking up in it. (PS, click on the Fantasy Coach link. You know you want to see a - get this- $47,000 kid bed.) If you really want to piss off the do-gooder, buy it for HIS kid.
8. For Veruca Salt’s dog: The Asian Inspired Canopy Dog Bed. These days you can get custom upholstered miniature furniture made to specifications for Fluffy or Trixie; this one has a bit of vintage appeal with wrought iron and a canopy. Don’t blame me when the dog poops on the silk though, or eats the posts, because you spent all your money on the bed and NONE on training. Um, no, I don’t see people like this ALL the time, not at all, no sir…why do you ask?
9. Speaking of dogs and poop, here is a great gift for that person you hate but still have to buy for: Dog Doo. Pretty straightforward. You pick the, uh, size you’d like and they ship it right out. It is sadly fake; they did in fact used to ship real live dog poo but amazingly enough, I believe that got them in some sort of trouble, so there you go. It may lack the earthiness of real poop but the sentiment is there, and in the end that’s all that counts.
10. And in honor of my husband the anti-gourmand: Vosges Gourmet Bacon Truffles. Mmmmm, bacon. This is for the guy who snorts apprehensively in the French restaurants and asks if they have any “real food”. A gentle introduction into the world of truffles from one of the finest manufacturers - it’s a truffle, but it has bacon in it so eat it and stop complaining that I didn’t get you a Tobler orange this year.
