So what are the worst Christmas gifts you can get someone? I'll save you the trouble and list them out here for you.
- Clothing (unless you need it)
- Something you didn't ask for
- Something gimmicky
- Something that takes up a lot of space
- Something that lights up and/or produces noise (esp. children's toys)
- Children's toys
Add to the suicidal ennui of suburban anguish in a recession based upon the paranoid greedy deep pockets of the rich rather than the fact that individual human beings require a living wage in order to survive an economy-based society, David Tennant was leaving Doctor Who. And not just leaving it, he was leaving in a pair of convoluted specials that involved John Simms bleaching his hair, a game of tag in the desert, Sabrina the Teenage Witch resurrections, Dragon Ball Z kamehameha's, John Simms eating, and Barack Obama of all goddamn people. You knew the shit had hit the fan when you say the tenth doctor's muted performance of running back and forth and looking at things in the Sarah Jane Adventures special. Seriously, why Barack Obama? Why the president of the United States magically saving the world from the United States' recession like some kind of kung-fu Jesus? Did I miss something, and somehow Europe isn't fabulously wealthy and infamous for charging an arm and a leg for menial crap? After all, when was the last time you saw a loaf of French bread for over twelve dollars? It's kind of like the fat kid pilfering the skinny kid's cupcakes at lunch, I guess.
Now we have Matt Smith, which begs the question: Do you want the parent that used to wear too much lipstick and abandoned his children after three years, or the one that picks up the broken pieces, teams up with a saucy redhead and can make goddamn bowties kickass? Of course, I'm probably partial because Matt Smith's old enough to be my brother, and he kind of talks like him. Well, when I say "kind of", I mean more like "a lot" and also like my cousins whose names I don't know and their whole gang of computer geeky friends (though they kinda lost sight of their identities since the family reunions gave up, which is a shame as my relatives own a motherfucking 30-inch TV that they don't know how to fucking use, but more on them later.
Run-on sentences aside, what I got for Christmas was a bunch of fucking action figures. Because I somehow graduated from university at the age of eight. I got a TARDIS that essentially serves as a hunk of hard plastic that sits on a dresser. Because, as hinted above, I really need stuff that takes up space and is a children's toy. And lights up and makes noise. I think I crapped myself a little with malaise. But I'll tell you one thing I did get that I got use out of: Metroid Fucking Prime Trilogy. Three goddamn games in one of the mostly-brilliant Metroid series which was the shit with the Wii being the perfect handler of FPS controls. This was the ultimate gold before Metroid: Other M came around and became the official best video game ever made ever ever. Prime Trilogy kept me busy for months after I got it; I didn't even need to cut my wrists to put up with the weekly beatings of raspy "we're not hiring"s and "preliminary" interviews and phone-slamming in my ear. And these were at entry-level job positions, too.
Okay, so maybe I wanted to get my brother a wooden dominos set that I saw. Unfortunately, as I was looking to pick out something for my older sister (an overpriced piece of shitty faux-jewelry, another utterly retarded gift), someone went and bought the dominos. School fairs are the worst place to pick out gifts. It hardly mattered in the end; it's not like my brother is renowned for being some kind of dominos fanatics. A person would probably have to be like one of those Bobby Fischer chess freaks. And besides--we already had a dominos set. This is the kind of thing that haunts me my whole life, and will inevitably continue to torment me well into my dying years (may they be soon).
But we're really here to talk about this Christmas. Yeah, today. While Best Buy's working to destroy what Christmas stands for (a day off from any bullshit of working), I'm sitting here considering taking up drinking. Let us now examine each item which I have received, so that we can examine its true value.
Figure 1: Lunar Phase Moon LampOh, did I mention I graduated from university? Yep, I'm living the debt-laden, jobless life now! So what does a college grad like me get for Christmas? Yes, I've been relegated to the basement (so I don't need to listen to my infant niece screaming because of air molecules attacking her face or whatever retarded shit bothers two-year-olds these days), so I don't have a window, which is just as well because this neighborhood's full of ugly emo children who ride their bikes in the middle of the street and flip you off when you're trying to drive past them.
Please take note of the picture of that child on that box. That kid's probably, oh, a third of my age? Hell, the company's name is "Discovery Kids". Not "Discovery Adults". And that hunk of misshapen plastic that resembles something like a solid fart cloud is the moon. Apparently my statement that I missed the recent lunar eclipse because nobody fucking mentioned it until it was gone had a big impact on my hick sister and her obese redneck husband (his second marriage or something, by the way. They don't sit next to each other on the couch, but more on that another day). Considering all my wall nails are currently taken up, I don't really feel that it's worth the trouble to make more holes in my wall for some gimmicky plastic thing that lights up. Oh, but there's a DVD about the lunar rover. You know, that overpriced shit that NASA demanded so many tax dollars for just because it was electronic or some rat's ass excuse. You know, because NASA's worth every dollar and never screws shit up over completely retarded things like the Hubble or the Challenger. To add insult to injury, I bet it's all made in red China, too, because east Asia is a completely trustworthy place to be sending our revenue towards. I used to think old guys worrying about Communism and everyone speaking Chinese one day were batshit insane.
Fig 2. Superman-themed Car "Kit"I used to watch Smallville, back when it made sense. Back when you didn't need to be some kind of comic book nerd to understand all this shit they were dropping on you. Back before zombie apocalypses, Dr. Fate, Tess "Lex in drag" Mercer, and whatever the fuck was going on in season nine. Give me up from the pilot up to Jensen Ackles's demise by meteor any day (though I insist he escaped, dropped his cover, and went to meet up with his younger brother at Stanford University after that whole witch-hunt debacle fell flat). Needless to say, Smallville provides something to have playing on the TV until Supernatural comes on, and even then both shows are ending this season so there'll be nothing whatsoever to watch except for the measly fourteen episodes of Doctor Who a year we get. Man, what a workload those British chaps at the BBC must have! Who can imagine doing twenty-three episodes of a series on average a year? Man, it's so tough having to do thirteen plus a Christmas special! I can see now the kind of pressure Mr. Tennant was in, earning a meager actor's wages and working almost half the time that an American sitcom does. After all, the BBC works hard to produce utter shit like Skins and twenty-fucking-something seasons of Top Gear. But look at it this way, that's twenty episodes of rancid tripe like Glee. Who am I kidding? Fawlty Towers lasted a pissing twelve episodes, and it was sheer gold, and that was broken up into six-episode halves. And here I thought it would be difficult to pity John Cleese of all people.
I think I may have digressed somewhere there. Just pretend I made another burn against those retards on the writer's strike. So, a car kit. Because apparently I'm all about cars. I'm going to level with you. I fucking hate automotives. I fucking hate driving. My average trip is approximately fifteen minutes, because the only place I ever goddamn go to is this local tech school, and even that I want to give up on. Cars are basically killing people, because they're extremely costly. Hell, we could just as easily paint automobiles in nanotech photovoltaics that would constantly charge the vehicle, even at night when the sun isn't shining through the magic of infrared (which is how nightvision goggles work). We'd never have to worry about charging up again, and poor people wouldn't need to cling so tightly to the threadbare fabric of their pus-ridden torturous existence. What the hell does this thing even do? It just fucking goes around parts of your car. What the fuck good does that do me?
But seriously, this thing comes with a CD holder. Because I really need to lengthen my commute by popping CDs in and out of my car. Because CDs are still really big right now. Listening to CDs means not listening to the weather on the radio, or else the local station that only plays the same goddamn three mullet rock songs over and over. Ten minutes only of ads, my ass. Hell, look at the thing. The only thing Superman about it is the goddamn S logo on a black background. That's about as Superman-esque as those goddamn bootleg stickers of Calvin pissing on something emo kids don't like (other cars, religion, sports, boring shit like that). Personally, I don't feel some bizarre machismo inclination to compensate for something by tricking out my car with worthless shit like this. Driving to me is about worrying some moronic jackass who isn't paying attention and can't figure out what a fucking turn signal is for crashing into you. You lose your vehicle and end up with even more goddamn debts, and your entire life falls apart because you can't afford a replacement vehicle to get to work or school. And we have to worry about writing motherfucking love letters in our resumes to get jobs.
Fig 3. Doctor Who drinking cup
I think I may have digressed somewhere there. Just pretend I made another burn against those retards on the writer's strike. So, a car kit. Because apparently I'm all about cars. I'm going to level with you. I fucking hate automotives. I fucking hate driving. My average trip is approximately fifteen minutes, because the only place I ever goddamn go to is this local tech school, and even that I want to give up on. Cars are basically killing people, because they're extremely costly. Hell, we could just as easily paint automobiles in nanotech photovoltaics that would constantly charge the vehicle, even at night when the sun isn't shining through the magic of infrared (which is how nightvision goggles work). We'd never have to worry about charging up again, and poor people wouldn't need to cling so tightly to the threadbare fabric of their pus-ridden torturous existence. What the hell does this thing even do? It just fucking goes around parts of your car. What the fuck good does that do me?
But seriously, this thing comes with a CD holder. Because I really need to lengthen my commute by popping CDs in and out of my car. Because CDs are still really big right now. Listening to CDs means not listening to the weather on the radio, or else the local station that only plays the same goddamn three mullet rock songs over and over. Ten minutes only of ads, my ass. Hell, look at the thing. The only thing Superman about it is the goddamn S logo on a black background. That's about as Superman-esque as those goddamn bootleg stickers of Calvin pissing on something emo kids don't like (other cars, religion, sports, boring shit like that). Personally, I don't feel some bizarre machismo inclination to compensate for something by tricking out my car with worthless shit like this. Driving to me is about worrying some moronic jackass who isn't paying attention and can't figure out what a fucking turn signal is for crashing into you. You lose your vehicle and end up with even more goddamn debts, and your entire life falls apart because you can't afford a replacement vehicle to get to work or school. And we have to worry about writing motherfucking love letters in our resumes to get jobs.
Fig 3. Doctor Who drinking cupThe British will drink tea until they die of urinary tract infections. Another thing that I'm not (aside from a car-worshipping neanderthal) is a big coffee/tea drinker. The few times I drank coffee I had to fill half the cup with milk. And frankly, though I love cocoa, I can do without it, and probably only drink it every other year at best. Besides, I get weird looks whenever I do so much as heat up water. These people are very nosy when it comes to me heating and consuming food. All I ask for is oatmeal or hot pockets before my morning commute, lunch so I can concentrate through the rest of the day's education, and they provide dinner for me whether I want it or not (especially not when they only give a half-assed try and make beef fucking stroganoff. Hell, I'll eat lima beans and brussel sprouts and spinach, but not motherfucking shit-ass I'd-rather-chew-on-a-paper-plate beef stroganoff. Ground beef, egg noodles, and brown gravy does not constitute a balanced meal).
So it's a mug with a "disappearing" TARDIS on it. Meaning the picture changes when you pour a hot beverage into it. More specifically, the TARDIS disappears. When you heat it up. With a hot beverage, which you use the cup for to drink out of. Meaning you can't see the fucking TARDIS as you're drinking it (with the cup set down, dummy). So you're drinking out a cup without a TARDIS on it, which ends up being scenery of an alley somewhere and a technicolor yawn on a black background. Oh, did I mention you can't machine wash this? A fucking dish. That can't go in a dish washer. As the Doc might say, "fucking Brilliant". As I might say when I chuck the thing off of a high rise, "Geronimo"!
Fig 4. Headphone-jack Speakers
So it's a mug with a "disappearing" TARDIS on it. Meaning the picture changes when you pour a hot beverage into it. More specifically, the TARDIS disappears. When you heat it up. With a hot beverage, which you use the cup for to drink out of. Meaning you can't see the fucking TARDIS as you're drinking it (with the cup set down, dummy). So you're drinking out a cup without a TARDIS on it, which ends up being scenery of an alley somewhere and a technicolor yawn on a black background. Oh, did I mention you can't machine wash this? A fucking dish. That can't go in a dish washer. As the Doc might say, "fucking Brilliant". As I might say when I chuck the thing off of a high rise, "Geronimo"!
Fig 4. Headphone-jack SpeakersLet us now move onto objects which I actually asked for. And then peer deeper into my psyche when we realize I ask for some stupid shit. My fault, really--but not entirely. See, my TV that I bought myself when I was still employed (at Wally World, for shame) was apparently made by somebody with cerebral palsy. It doesn't have stereo sound. Who the fuck doesn't offer stereo sound? The piece of shit might as well be in black and white. And it's started to look tiny, too, which just boggles my mind. It's not like the thing can shrink in the goddamn wash, but that's just down to poor space utilization by my favorite video games.
So these speakers. They look really easy to break if you try to take them with you to places. I sort of wanted to bust tunes out of my DSi, or maybe even circumvent my TV's lack of stereo, but to no avail. I plugged them in to my DSi as it was playing sound, and I immediately started looking for an "on" switch on the speakers. There wasn't one. I couldn't tell if the music was playing on the DSi's speakers or not. It turned out the sound was coming from the speakers I'd bought. They were quiet as shit. They were quieter than the DSi's speakers. They were quieter than my headphones. They were quieter than any other device I plugged them in to. I desperately rechecked the speakers themselves for a non-existent volume knob. A frantic search for some kind of documentation was cut short by the fact there was no documentation with them. Just a plastic box that said "Mini speakers are big on style!". Big on style, short on volume. So much for "busting out" with some bass-laden heavy audio artillery. Audio-llery? I think not. This one, too, must hide under the bed, unable to be returned without a receipt.
Fig 5. Cordless Desktop
So these speakers. They look really easy to break if you try to take them with you to places. I sort of wanted to bust tunes out of my DSi, or maybe even circumvent my TV's lack of stereo, but to no avail. I plugged them in to my DSi as it was playing sound, and I immediately started looking for an "on" switch on the speakers. There wasn't one. I couldn't tell if the music was playing on the DSi's speakers or not. It turned out the sound was coming from the speakers I'd bought. They were quiet as shit. They were quieter than the DSi's speakers. They were quieter than my headphones. They were quieter than any other device I plugged them in to. I desperately rechecked the speakers themselves for a non-existent volume knob. A frantic search for some kind of documentation was cut short by the fact there was no documentation with them. Just a plastic box that said "Mini speakers are big on style!". Big on style, short on volume. So much for "busting out" with some bass-laden heavy audio artillery. Audio-llery? I think not. This one, too, must hide under the bed, unable to be returned without a receipt.
Fig 5. Cordless DesktopThe last gift, apart from a USB hub. Doesn't that keyboard look dynamic, with the "EX100" on it and everything? When you do as much writing as I do (which isn't very much), you find it's hard to concentrate on your task when you aren't comfortable. As soft and plush as this chair is, it's really difficult to sit forever. I do my best writing lying down, but I can't do that from the bed because the cords on this computer are too short. Seriously too short. The monitor cable barely even reaches the computer, which is the reason why I had to replace the old video card because its plug broke from the cord being too short and magically wrenching the screws out. There are a lot of things wrong with this computer that would warrant replacing it outright, and the surrogate bastard child of this family broke a far less-used computer outright recently, so it's not like a new computer would be unwanted. My suggestion was for a new computer to replace the one I currently use, which could then take the place of the unusable one. I even went to the trouble of pestering my long-lost brother, estranged in the foreign nation of highly-impressionable nutjobs known as Japan (for more on them, check out Cracked.com) about what he'd get if he got a new computer, and magically there was a reply (people work twenty-hour work days there. Also, they invented ganguro). Invariably, however, I know that my family will screw it up and buy themselves a computer, leaving me with this hunk of shit I need to reformat every few months. A computer they don't need, as they just whine about their laptops they use whilst watching crappy TV like crime dramas all day. The only person using the computer room is their surrogate bastard child who goes in there to watch Spongebob and play shovelware video games on the PS2.
So with a cordless keyboard, I thought I could just type out stuff that I needed to write from my bed. This was doomed from the start, however, as I can't see a goddamn thing on these huge nineteen-inch monitors from that far away. So while much of the reason this is a sucky present is my fault, there is something else yet to report. Something beyond my insurmountable ability to fuck everything up and generally make my life more difficult for myself. Something besides the fact it just wastes more goddamn USB ports. Something like the fact that they only work from a distance of three feet.
Yes, the wireless keyboard and mouse (the latter of which doesn't even have a goddamn back or forward button, for fuck's sake) don't work unless I am sitting at my computer. So exactly what benefit do they offer? The cords I'm currently using aren't in the goddamn way. They get tucked back behind the desk out of sight and out of mind. And I still have to plug in wireless devices anyway for their receivers. So these wireless devices are actually worse because they require batteries to run.
The other things I got were a shirt (clothing) that looks like it was designed by a total spaz with absolutely no sense of gestalt, and a USB hub. Undoubtedly I'll need another USB hub octopussed onto my existing USB hubs, because every motherfucking device these days uses a piece of shit USB port. I have a perfectly good mouse port that I can't use because my mouse has a fucking short-ass USB cord. It somehow doesn't want to work with the USB-to-mouse port converter that I have.
So Merry Christmas, here's a USB hub, and it's purely functional. How very Spartan. That was the extent of what I got for Christmas. And I bet anything it wasn't cheap, either. Greedy businessmen equals recession equals overpricing novelty crap. I was asked to write out a list of things I'd want, so I did. I knew it was slim pickings this year, as the 3DS doesn't come out until next year, despite the working prototype shown at E3 a year ago. So I just asked for a few video games. Samurai Warriors 3, and even some lousy grade B games I was willing to take a risk on just for the sake of distracted myself from thoughts of suicide, such as Disaster: Day of Crisis and Epic Mickey, which was bought for somebody else in the family. So it's not like they couldn't find what I'd asked for. After all, I asked for Baroque for three holidays, and it was always in stock whenever I passed through a Toys R Us or a Target with these people. And these people are not big gamers. They never play video games. They all own the DS, though. Their idea of a video game is Farmville or stupid Facebook shit like that. I'm so embarrassed that these people are into the bastion of filth and failure that is social networking. They would never pick up a Final Fantasy or Dynasty Warriors game in their lives, let alone a controller. Hell, they're even put off by the fucking Sims. On the plus side of not getting Samurai Warriors 3 is that at least I didn't get something I didn't really want instead, like Epic Mickey. Would you rather get a game you asked for and a game you didn't want, or just a game you didn't want? Or how about none of the above, because I didn't get a single video game this year. Video games take up little to no space (assuming you're not a total fucktard and put your shit away where it belongs once you're done using it), and are actually valuable. I'm not going to be embarrassed if someone sees that I have Samurai Warriors 3 in my library. I'm going to be embarrassed if they see that fucking moon unit light. If they think I should be embarrassed by having Samurai Warriors 3, I'm fucking kicking their ass off my property.
Now, what was the standard for this Christmas?
The infant that we can't afford got a kitchenette set (takes up space, makes noise) and a singing, dancing Mickey Mouse (creepy, makes noise, very creepy). She also got a ton of crap that will undoubtedly need to be picked up off the floor, search for beneath furniture, and get mangled or destroyed in one way or another either by herself flushing them down the can or eaten by the stupid dogs. Either way, there will no longer be a place to go underfoot, and anything that gets chucked down the stairs is going into my trash receptacle.
The surrogate bastard child spent the entire year talking back to everyone in the family, never doing his homework, and never doing his chores when he was asked to. He was generally moody, distasteful, embarrassing, and retarded. He got a PSP!
Money is officially the best present to give someone, because people know what they want. I don't even feel like watching Doctor Who this evening anymore. As it stands, this is worse than getting nothing. If I had gotten nothing, I'd be hurt, but at least that I'd understand. At least that would make sense. This Christmas, I'm converting to Satanism.
So with a cordless keyboard, I thought I could just type out stuff that I needed to write from my bed. This was doomed from the start, however, as I can't see a goddamn thing on these huge nineteen-inch monitors from that far away. So while much of the reason this is a sucky present is my fault, there is something else yet to report. Something beyond my insurmountable ability to fuck everything up and generally make my life more difficult for myself. Something besides the fact it just wastes more goddamn USB ports. Something like the fact that they only work from a distance of three feet.
Yes, the wireless keyboard and mouse (the latter of which doesn't even have a goddamn back or forward button, for fuck's sake) don't work unless I am sitting at my computer. So exactly what benefit do they offer? The cords I'm currently using aren't in the goddamn way. They get tucked back behind the desk out of sight and out of mind. And I still have to plug in wireless devices anyway for their receivers. So these wireless devices are actually worse because they require batteries to run.
The other things I got were a shirt (clothing) that looks like it was designed by a total spaz with absolutely no sense of gestalt, and a USB hub. Undoubtedly I'll need another USB hub octopussed onto my existing USB hubs, because every motherfucking device these days uses a piece of shit USB port. I have a perfectly good mouse port that I can't use because my mouse has a fucking short-ass USB cord. It somehow doesn't want to work with the USB-to-mouse port converter that I have.
So Merry Christmas, here's a USB hub, and it's purely functional. How very Spartan. That was the extent of what I got for Christmas. And I bet anything it wasn't cheap, either. Greedy businessmen equals recession equals overpricing novelty crap. I was asked to write out a list of things I'd want, so I did. I knew it was slim pickings this year, as the 3DS doesn't come out until next year, despite the working prototype shown at E3 a year ago. So I just asked for a few video games. Samurai Warriors 3, and even some lousy grade B games I was willing to take a risk on just for the sake of distracted myself from thoughts of suicide, such as Disaster: Day of Crisis and Epic Mickey, which was bought for somebody else in the family. So it's not like they couldn't find what I'd asked for. After all, I asked for Baroque for three holidays, and it was always in stock whenever I passed through a Toys R Us or a Target with these people. And these people are not big gamers. They never play video games. They all own the DS, though. Their idea of a video game is Farmville or stupid Facebook shit like that. I'm so embarrassed that these people are into the bastion of filth and failure that is social networking. They would never pick up a Final Fantasy or Dynasty Warriors game in their lives, let alone a controller. Hell, they're even put off by the fucking Sims. On the plus side of not getting Samurai Warriors 3 is that at least I didn't get something I didn't really want instead, like Epic Mickey. Would you rather get a game you asked for and a game you didn't want, or just a game you didn't want? Or how about none of the above, because I didn't get a single video game this year. Video games take up little to no space (assuming you're not a total fucktard and put your shit away where it belongs once you're done using it), and are actually valuable. I'm not going to be embarrassed if someone sees that I have Samurai Warriors 3 in my library. I'm going to be embarrassed if they see that fucking moon unit light. If they think I should be embarrassed by having Samurai Warriors 3, I'm fucking kicking their ass off my property.
Now, what was the standard for this Christmas?
The infant that we can't afford got a kitchenette set (takes up space, makes noise) and a singing, dancing Mickey Mouse (creepy, makes noise, very creepy). She also got a ton of crap that will undoubtedly need to be picked up off the floor, search for beneath furniture, and get mangled or destroyed in one way or another either by herself flushing them down the can or eaten by the stupid dogs. Either way, there will no longer be a place to go underfoot, and anything that gets chucked down the stairs is going into my trash receptacle.
The surrogate bastard child spent the entire year talking back to everyone in the family, never doing his homework, and never doing his chores when he was asked to. He was generally moody, distasteful, embarrassing, and retarded. He got a PSP!
Money is officially the best present to give someone, because people know what they want. I don't even feel like watching Doctor Who this evening anymore. As it stands, this is worse than getting nothing. If I had gotten nothing, I'd be hurt, but at least that I'd understand. At least that would make sense. This Christmas, I'm converting to Satanism.
