10 Gifts

Once again, the yearly exercise of getting presents for the people on your list has come around.  Yes I'm publishing this at Christmas, otherwise known as 'The Holidays' for those of you that are probably offended by everything.  This is the big daddy of gift giving holidays, but of course there are other events for gift giving.  If you take the reason for whatever event out of the event itself, you are left with an obligation to give someone something.  So be sure to remember the reasons you are giving gifts in the first place that will probably help.  I have made blog posts about giving gifts before this is not about giving gifts, this is about the gifts you give.  Here are 10 gifts.

10 - Swing!..and a miss - Yup, this gift was just not appreciated.  You put all your thought and spirit into selecting the gift and it was obviously not appreciated.  Sometimes it's because the receiver is not very good at getting gifts and sometimes it's because the gift was just the wrong thing at the wrong time.  Often a gift unappreciated is just not the right age for the person you are giving it to.  I have been guilty of giving grown men remote control cars that I thought would be cool.  It wasn't really the right gift, but that's the breaks when you are trying to figure out gifts.

9 - And this is for you - The sudden gift usually at Christmas but can also be on a shared birthday.  You find yourself on the receiving end of a present and you are mostly empty handed.  Fortunately for you, you have purchased a series of emergency gifts already wrapped and ready to give.  These gifts will likely not be perfect gifts, but they are gifts and as such will save face.  Be careful to have a blank gift tag on it with a sharpie in the room. That gift basket full of odd flavored jellies in single serving jars can really get you out of a bind.

8 - Potential Realized - This gift is one that you have bought yourself, but your spouse informs you that is your present. Example:
Husband: "Honey!  look what I got!  this carbon fiber fishing rod is perfect AND it was on sale!"
Wife:  "That looks great dear!  How much did THAT set us back?"
Husband: "500$, BUT this is normally 1200$!!!  I couldn't pass it up!"
Wife:  "So this is your birthday right?"
Husband:  "But it's 6 months away!"
Wife:  "So this is your birthday right?"
Husband:...
Wife:  "Would you like me to wrap it?"
Husband "No, I'll take it now"

7 - It's a pair of scissors - This is an old story my mother used to tell us entitled Spoiled Christmas Joy. It was the tale of a young girl that had purchased a gift for her mother and she refused to tell any of her siblings what the present was.  After some pressure she said "I'm not telling anyone, but on Christmas when Mom opens her present I'll yell "It's a pair of scissors!".  This was the end of the story.  To be fair the story is of foreign origin and may be specific to local humor styles.

6 - Secret Admirer Gift - This is a gift for any time.  I was a wee lad of tender years and I bought my crush something and added a heartfelt note.  Of course this was all a mistake.  But it's one of the early times that you hope that everything will be perfect.  You are on the wire without a net.  Even though you are trying to protect your identity, you secretly hope that the person you secretly admire also secretly admires you.  It's all very sophisticated.  Anything given at Valentines day is probably good.

5 - Ok ok, now leave me alone - Someone that you don't particularly like has borrowed something and you would rather not see them again instead of get your item back.  You say 'no, really, you can keep it.'  This holiday season, give the gift of a used chainsaw.

4 - Sudden inspiration - you have no occasion and yet you have found the perfect gift for someone.  This happens sometimes and it's amazing when it does.  You suddenly see something that you are certain that nobody is going to get for that person and that person probably doesn't even know about.  Should you get it for them?  Probably.  Usually this gift morphs right into the perfect gift and is always worth trying for.

3 - The unintended gift - This specifically is where you buy someone a lottery ticket and it happens to win something fairly big.  You wanted to get them more than 5 dollars worth of lottery tickets, but you most certainly didn't want to get them 50k.  Oh well.  This happens obviously with lottery tickets but also happens with collector cards where the packages of cards contain random cards.  Some packages are winners and others are losers.  Risky Risky.


2 - The gift horse - You know, the one you don't want to look in the mouth?  The situation in which this happens usually starts with something about which you have a mild obsession, but that has several models.  You want a tablet and you know exactly which one you want.  Now the gift giving holiday has arrived and you get the tablet you have been obsessing over!  YAY! Unfortunately it's the one that is a few features short of the model you had your eyes on.  It looks exactly the same and behaves in a very similar fashion and yet it's NOT the one you want.  You KNOW you should be grateful, but you really aren't.  Instead you are wondering if you can get away without opening it so you can quietly take it back and finesse your way into the model you want.  Yeah, there are really very few ways you can win in this one.  If you are on the other side of this, just remember, it IS the thought that counts and just because you didn't get the EXACT right one doesn't mean you didn't get it for them.  They will take it back and get the perfect one which will look identical to the one you got them.  Don't stress it and don't force the issue ala "Aren't you going to open it??".


1 - Perfect!  -  Opposite of the Swing and miss, the perfect gift has everything going for it.  The receiver is touched, possibly beyond words.  You feel so good about how successful your present is, you decide that you want to try this gift thing some more.  They feel so good about your gift that they keep mentioning it and so do you.  Once you give the perfect gift, you want do relive the moment over and over.  PERFECT.

This blog post was late.  On purpose.  It was an experiment.  I didn't find much out.  Happy Holidays (This is a blanket phrase that includes Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years).

Top 10 Presents

Tis the season, blah blah blah blah blah. Yes, it's time once again that we pay some small amount of lip-service to the son of God and then go and buy more than we should. Christmas is to financial responsibility what the midnight dessert buffet on a cruise ship is to Weight Watchers. We've learned from the time we are young that we are celebrating the Birth of Christ and that we give presents to signify the present that he gave us in the sacrifice of his life. In fact there are numerous poems and pithy little anecdotes describing how our traditions of Christmas came about. Yes, I know, we actually co-opted it from the Pagans, but it's ours now and we probably aren't giving it back. We try very hard to subjugate the material aspect of Christmas to the spiritual, but to no avail. What is the season all about? Just ask any 6 year old. They never lie. It's about presents. Specifically from Santa. Santa plain rocks, he knows what you want before you do and he will give you more than you thought you wanted. Mom and Dad give you socks and shirts, Santa gives you BB Guns. Unfortunately, once you get the hang of this concept, it's gone. Santa's power fades in the face of brats with high expectations. What you are left with is some kind of SUPER allowance that does not come as a gift but rather an obligation. *sigh* How I long for the days when I was young and so excited about the potential of presents that I couldn't sleep. It was MAGIC.

While this blog is about my thoughts on seemingly random subjects, it tends to not be much about me. This is because I lead a fairly boring life. I don't mind it at all, but it is what it is. This episode I will lend a little more insight into me as I will be listing the top 10 Presents I got. Not just from Christmas, but from anything. Some of you got the same things, while most of you got the same feeling. And they weren't necessarily the best presents I got, but rather the most memorable presents I got. I dedicate this list to the memory of my Dad. A guy that LOVED to be Santa.

10. Rooster Watch - Back in the day. It was a BIG deal when you got your first timepiece. So big in fact that it kind of marked the first time your parents took you seriously or thought you capable of doing enough with your life that you would need to be ON TIME for something...anything. I got a rooster watch. It's head would bob up and down to the seconds and other than that it was a regular watch that you wound up and had to tell time with the hands (a very important skill to this day). I couldn't stop watching it. I would tell people what time it was to the second. It was amazing. all you had to do was wind it. Keep it wound up and you would be a paragon of responsibility, a beacon of trust. I'm not entirely certain what happend to that watch, but I think it ended up succumbing to the slings and arrows of careless youth. I do remember walking around one day hiding my wrist from view because I had lost it. A sad day indeed.





9. Magic Shot shooting gallery - This was actually not my present, it was my brothers. The Christmas we got that we also got several other things that made it one of the most special holidays I could ever remember. First, my Dad was home for the whole winter break so that was cool. Second, I think he had just gotten some kind of bonus or something at work because it just seemed like we got a LOT of stuff. Not that it's important, but it IS memorable. Anyhow, I remember seeing this toy on TV and really wanting it badly. It was a self contained shooting gallery that had 24 steel balls that were held in a box behind a thick plastic cover. You pushed the magnetic gun against the cover to pick up a ball and the pulled the trigger to thump the ball into flight against the target on the other side of the box. You couldn't lose the bullets, the targets remained out of harms way yet you still got to feel like you were shooting stuff. This present made me the 2nd most jealous of my young greedy life. Fortunately, my brother was a good sport and let me play with it. But we both knew it was his.

8. Shogun Warrior - This was a large action figure that was a big companion figure to go along with Godzilla. I never had Godzilla, never wanted him. I wanted a Shogun warrior. That Christmas ended up being a particularly lean one for my family as I recall. I remember getting a lot of clothes. The dead give-away of a 'hard candy Christmas'. But my dad actually got me this cool toy. it fired bird shaped rockets out of it's chest and had a fist that launched in case you needed to punch Godzilla back into the Triassic period. I was 13 years old at the time and deemed a bit old for this kind of toy, but I wanted it anyway. Truth is, I still love toys, I don't even care about big toys either. If I had a little less self control, I would probably have several thousand dollars worth of goofy toys. As it is I have way too many.





7. The Kaypro 286i - This was an incredible present that would likely launch my career in the IT field. This baby had some software and some big floppy drives as well as a color monitor (CGA graphics baby. it was SWEET!). The keyboard was heavy and sturdy. I had that keyboard for many years after I had left the box for better models. I played immersive games like fun house and zork as well as rogue and hack. I still play hack. It's one of the funnest games you can play on a computer. Once you get past the learning curve, you have a hard time letting go of the game. This computer would follow me to college and just a little beyond. It was that model of computer that allowed me to hack into a particular colleges mainframe. Of course I wouldn't change my grades...I probalby should have. Would you like to play a game?




6. My Dirt Bike - I've had several bikes in my life, but I got a dirt bike for Christmas once, this was at the same time that builders were making houses down by the school. Those dirt mounds stayed there for all the winter and a good part of the spring. I would ride my dirt bike in the dirt on those mounds like I was Evil Kinevil. Of course I didn't really jump much, but I loved going up and down those mounds. I loved it so much that I broke the fork on my best bike leaving me bikeless. After that I got a much less memorable regular 10-speed bike with the ram's horn handlebars. You couldn't really go over dirt mounds in that. I figured that out.



5. The Atari 2600 - This was the first video game to really break out. The year was 1977. I had seen the Atari 2600 game system at Sears. You could play it in the store. It was simply amazing. Game cartridges were all you needed. There were all kinds of games for it and each one came in color! It had a joystick with one big red button and also some paddle controllers if you got the breakout or pong game. That was easily the most used present I had ever gotten. We wore several of those controllers to the point that we were taking them apart in order to frankenstein a working controller out of spare parts. The most memorable part of this present was the fact that I was certain that my parents weren't getting it for me. Absolutely sure. I was hinting in as subtile a fashion as any 12 year old could. When the actual Holiday had arrived, I knew that I was not going to get it. It was too late. Mom and Dad didn't get it. I had searched out their hiding places and they had nothing there of consequence. In years past when my dad was unable to find what we wanted on Christmas eve (his favorite day for shopping for Christmas) he would write a letter to us from Santa and about how some lazy elves couldn't get this last present out the door etc. I was expecting that and was shocked that my parents had in fact outwitted me. How could they have purchased and hidden it in a place I couldn't find?! It was a Christmas Miracle.

4. My Sterio Boom Box - This gift wasn't nearly as memorable as it was absolutely useful. For Graduation I got a JVC portable sterio system with detachable speakers a 5 band equalizer, a tape deck and am/fm/ShortWave. I still have that box and use it today for my computer speakers. It is amazing. I've lost the tape deck and I doubt it will ever be truely protable again, unless that portability takes it to the dump. But that probably won't be for another 10 years. Congratulations JVC on making a product so sturdy that I was probably kept from putting money into the sterio component industry for at least 40 years of my life. The year after I got it, my dad accidentally stepped on it and broke one of the casette buttons rendering it unable to dub. He claimed it was my fault for leaving it on the floor, where it had been for nearly a year. I'm sure it was.

3. My Car Mat - Ok this present wasn't actually mine either, it was for both me and my brother, but as I recall, it was given to my brother to share with me on his birthday. I could be wrong about that memory. It could have been just for him, but I liked it so much that I played with it all the time. I just know that when we got it it was so absolutely cool that I can still remember the elements. This was well before they had cool play mats that they sold you for 30 bucks. This was one that was painstakingly made by my mom and included places of interest in our lives. She had cut and sewn the mat itself, which easily filled a small room, and hand drawn all of the roads and landmarks. It was a masterpiece. There was our elementary school, many roads and parking spaces, and the airport. We took our dad to the airport often because his work would take him all over the country. the other was home and several points of interest along the way. We would drive our hot wheels and fisher price cars all over this mat. You could use the mat for all kinds of things other than it's intended purpose too. You could roll yourself or your little brother up in it.

2. Digital Watch - Ok, I have already mentioned a watch before, but this one was special. it was DIGITAL. That's right no more divining the earths relative position to the sun for me, I had a device that would tell me right off. It was gold with a dark red face. You pushed a button and the numbers showed you what time it was in bright red. I remember wearing that watch to bed and turning it on to see the glow under the covers. If you hit the button again, you could see the seconds. THE SECONDS!!! This stunning marvel was the accessory that made the man. I knew that females from any kind of distance would close in on me just to get a look at the red glowing glory that was wrapped around my wrist. I had hoped that perhaps a secret combination of buttons would allow this timepiece to emmit a sudden powerful laser beam James Bond Style. I couldn't derive the combiniation, but no matter. It was the apex of technology and style. This present was the first experience I had with the ever moving target of technology. A scant 6 months later my best friend would get a digital watch that not only had the seconds, but also had the date. This of course put my watch to shame. This I'm quite embarrased to say was the MOST jealous I had been of any present others had gotten. Not because he got a better watch than I did, but because now what I had wasn't a big deal at all. Yes, very embarrased indeed.

1. Magnavox Oddessy - This was the first video game I had ever seen. We were at the Zenith store and i saw it on a demo tv. Back then TV's had glass tubes and usually were housed in consoles with fine wood cabinets. I used to love to look at the tube testing machine that was at the drug store and wondered what you did with it. My dad was fairly handy, but he didn't dare touch the tv. We had a repair man come over for that. So anyway, up till this point, there was no point to a TV other than watching a black and white indian head (native American) grace the screen or to watch football and gunsmoke. There was no other point to this box. Enter the Magnavox Oddessy. This was the FIRST video game system ever and every game looked like PONG. This game system didn't have graphics per se, but rather it had overlays that clung to the screen with static electricity. I could write a top 10 list just on the games for that system. It was amazing. We played it as a family for so long that I missed the David Copperfield magic special that I was very looking forward to seeing. Apparently he made something disappear.

Happy Holidays everyone! No matter what you celebrate. Thanks so much for reading and your comments.

Top 10 things in a paper bag

Some realizations come late for me. Here I am in the store standing in line, biding my time and I get asked the timeless question "paper or plastic". I say plastic, and it hit me. I don't know ANYONE that asks for paper. I don't know anyone that cares. Now I will admit that I haven't taken the time to query everyone as to their bagging preference, but I am going to assume that everyone I know takes plastic.

They say plastic, but It's actually bio degradable cornstarch. I'm pretty sure that most people don't care about that either.

So what happened to the once vaunted paper bag? The bag that used to do it all for everyone, the elevated expression of recycling. This is my tribute to the paper bag. These are the Top 10 things you would find in a paper bag.

10. Screws - In my garage, I have a bag of sheetrock screws that try really hard to puncture the bag and cause trouble. If that bag were PLASTIC it would have given up the ghost a long time ago, but paper retains it's integrity longer after being compromised.
















9. a Hand - I remember using the smaller paper bags to make those goofy hand pupets with block heads. you could even cut a hole in the bag to make it seem like your creations could actually eat. In fact as I think about it now, I'm sure there is a re-enactment of Star Wars somewhere done in paper bag puppets.










8. Ripple - Or the ultra cheap adult beverege of your choice. You could go with Thunderbird as well, or maybe a lovely concoction of your own design. The point is, you keep it in the brown paper bag so you can just carry around the bag and drink out of it like a precursor to the juice box.













7. The Unknown Comic - This guy was a semi-funny regular on the Gong show. His head was to be ever shrouded in the identity concealing confines of a paper bag. His bit would just not be the same in a corn starch plastic bag.












6. Groceries - of course. Time was that all groceries were found in the paper bag, which was more of a flimsy box than it was a useful carrying device. This might have been a reason for it's demise in the market place. Plastic has the handy handles. Paper, you gotta heft it from the bottom. The ironic thing is that for years careful baggers would put your ice cream and your fresh produce in plastic bags before they put it in the paper bag because the paper bag's mortal enemy was moisture! It didn't take much to turn this once sturdy carrying device into a handful of pulp. So I guess they thought it would be best to cut out the middle man and use plastic bags because they were using them already.





5. Newspapers - I don't know about you, but in my house growing up, all the newspapers would go into paper bags and await the eventual troop of Boyscouts to come pick them all up and cash them in for a dollar a ton or something like that. Sure you could use twine and tie up bundles of newsprint, but we used paper bags.





4. a Cat - Back in the day, our cat would immediately find her way into the paper bag that always tended to make a box shaped tunnel that was semi closed in the front but had a sturdy back wall when laying on it's side. She could not resist. From her paper lair, she would slowly peer out and assess her quarry until it was time....to STRIKE!









3. Garbage - The paper bag was the original form of recycling. When you were done taking your groceries home, you would stack up the paper bags and use them one by one in your medium size garbage cans. Obviously best for DRY garbage, it was still very useful for holding refuse of all sorts. But now our garbage cans have also opted for plastic. *sigh*














2. Bananas - There might be some hope for the paper bag yet. The problem was this. If you had green bananas out with your other fruit, everything else would go bad, while the bananas came of age. This was because of some gas that the banana emits as it ripens. A few other fruits do this as well. Paper Bag to the rescue!!! lets good air in but doesn't let bad gas out. Maybe they should make underwear out of paper bags.











1. Presents - My mom was a crafty lady growing up. She realized that my interest in Christmas presents would be more than I could conceal. To thwart this, she pre-wrapped the presents in paper bags and THEN in colorful wrapping rendering the contents virtually invisible to prying eyes...BLAST!!! FOILED AGAIN...say foil, that could be another blog...












Ahh paper bag, we hardly knew ye.

Till Next time...Thanks for reading!