As someone who once worked in retail, it’s not hard to get cynical about Christmas – I actually saw & witnessed people buying presents by the pound – actually holding it up and declaring loudly that it’s price to bulk weight ratio was sufficient … sufficient for what? To not be excluded from the reading of the last will & testament in the ensuing years? I’ve seen the dead and haunted eyes and the death maul dragging of their bodies on a FORCED DEATH MARCH to the malls and shops to fulfill the ritual of celebrating the coronation of another year… but without meaning – it’s all just the transfer of crap from the malls into the homes of those you allegedly care about … “just to get it done” robs it of all meaning.

So, when you are out there – don’t make it seem like Sir John Franklin wandering aimlessly looking for a Northwest Passage into your loved one’s hearth and heart and metaphorically – freezing to death, going mad or forced to utter the phrase “I’ll eat Johnson first, Gordon has a gammy leg.”

In other words, don’t buy these …

Yes, the Wii is hard to find. But do not resort to this from WM unless the following is true:

I like to taunt my kids.
I like to traumatize my kids.
I would like my kids to hate me.

Yes, the Wii is hard to find but this card literally guarantees YOU NOTHING. It merely states you had $249 dollars you were willing to convert to a plastic card with a picture of Wii. This is not a HOLIDAY for anyone under the age of 24. If they’re graduating college with a degree in tractor air conditioning repair, that’s fine – they’re old to know that sometimes in life you ask for a fun, you get a picture of a guy having fun … so if you want to show the kids you searched high and low and far & wide, make a photo scrapbook of all the stores you visited in vain … they’ll think their parents are crazy but at least they won’t think you’re mean … there is a difference.

Now, Costco doesn’t sell a lot of things too kooky (well, maybe coffins) but this is just bizarre. I did not realize this was a problem in America … man, I have a lot of canned food goods and man, I just do not have the time to properly rotate them as I should.

Do we really need to spend $50 to $320 to add a device that rotates our cans?

First of all, maybe you have too DAMN MANY CANNED GOODS in your house if they’re going boutalism and bad in your household cabinets … OR maybe you are just not eating them fast enough. Now I know Costco likes to sell everything in the 144-pack but maybe you have too damn many beans if you need to rotate the 140 cans you have left or maybe you should eat the beans you have before buying more?
To the two ladies in the photo, STOP BUYING CANS! Enough already. Is the can goods council of America your neighbors so they might pop by for a quick look and you want to avoid the social embrassment of having less than a thousand cans? Maybe your family might want to consider other kinds of food packaging – even frozen? And if you really need to have 300 cans in your pantry – shouldn’t you have a butler that can do that for you? After all, Del Monte peas need as much care as a 1996 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon?

If you ever thought, I need to class up my life, I need to break from the mold of norm, I need to introduce color to my ass …

Yep, colored TP.

Too many jokes … please make your own.

If you’re the sort of person who likes to back up puns … sure, anyone can say someone else else is corny but how many people can back it up with $64 of fun … specifically a giant corn on the cob? And if that’s too corny for you, they sell another 100 giant items.

While you’re stepping up in the world of TP – why not step up your furniture? Do you keep running into your neighbors at the Goodwill store – you want to upgrade but you can’t now that your mortgage APR is 27.6%? Have you ever been in that HoJo in Decatur and thought, nice sofa but I could never afford this quality in my house … your prayers have been answered. Now, take that furniture home from your favorite hotel/motel/bungalow/double wide … they also sell used mattresses …

If this global warming thing is true – time to step and motorize your cooler to double duty … now in electric versions! Your teenage kids will love a ride in this to school.

If you can ignore the girl for a second, just a second, what is the Gray Kangroo? It’s a filter for your cheap liquor (mostly voka) so your Seagram’s will taste like Grey Goose … now if you buy it yourself and your friends don’t notice, woohoo your bank account and maybe your friends are all drunken clowns … now, if you get this as a gift, what are people saying about YOU?

It’s a stun gun, it’s a flashlight and it’s a keychain. Sure it can be used as self defense but honestly, don’t you think the following scenario is likely to happen:

When they need a flashlight, they will trip, fall on it and they will activate the stungun.

When they need to stun someone, they will shine a puny light in the chest of their attacker, annoying the blazes out of them?

It also has a ‘Nap Zapper’ … which if you replace the letters AP out of the first word and replace it with UT – that is what is most likely to happen?

Oh the other hand, it can be fun watching your brother-in-law fall asleep on the 25th and the keychain slips to his groin area … gather up the kids and fire up the videocamera …

Art? Infantile? You & your significant other have sexual identity issues? You & your significant other stumble around in the dark too often in a drunken stupor? What are your friends saying when you get this as a gift?

If you only wish your husband or boyfriend had a hobby that could also be potentially* profitable? For only $2,500.99 (yea, that $.99 is going to bring in all the fence sitters on this item), you too can change not just your odometer but all the neighbors also – a hobby that is both fun, brain teasing and potentially profitable! Roll back your ’88 Buick LeSabre to 12 miles – it’s a collectible!

*Potentially could mean lots of things – like jail time also but hey, maybe $2,500 is a small price to pay to send him up the river?

Sure, there were lots of funny scenes in the Godfather but the horse head was the funniest gag involving a bloody horses head since FUNNY GIRL … now relive it over and over and everyday with your understanding spouse … it just kills me!

5 Lbs of Silly Putty – no problem, you want that in pink, purple, blue, or yellow?

Pee Goooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, feel free to buy these for YOURSELF but do not gift these items, please, just buy them a gift card … or better yet …

Or a ssheet of $50 dollars uncut – practical AND exercise … if you need to eat, just snip off a piece …

And don’t buy anything for your best guy or girl here … better save it for Valentine’s Day … nothing could be more romantic than a SYNC OUTLOOK UPGRADE?