The Season of Giving is already weighing down on me something fierce. I hadn’t even started really thinking about Christmas gifts before the websites started giving me more deadlines I had to meet to guarantee shipping by December 23rd. Apparently I’m already way behind. So I went out tonight to do a first pass, hoping that the perfect gifts for everybody would jump out at me. It took a little over two hours and I didn’t get anything but discouraged.
People have told me that I’m hard to shop for, because although I’m not quiet about stuff I think is cool, I’ve usually already bought it for myself. All right, I’ll give you that, but look at it from my perspective. Being a shallow consumerist whore makes it really difficult to buy stuff for other people. The stores are filled with stuff that I want to get; they stand out. And nobody bothers meeting me halfway — when I’m going on about some DVD or the Apple store or whatever, they just nod and wait for an opportunity to change the subject, never doing what conversation dictates and interrupting me to talk about what they want.
It’s even worse now that I don’t really talk to people anymore, but just make long blog entries and then read occasional comments in response. Nobody bothers to say, “Yes, that’s a fascinating point you make about Wikipedia and online news aggregation sources, but have I mentioned how my favorite movie blank was just released on DVD?” Or “Another gripping and insightful commentary on ‘Alias!’ It reminds me of how much I want to read Some New Book Title.” Or even better, “That was a captivating example of navel-gazing self-obsessive introspection. In response, here is a step-by-step list of how to buy gifts for women that don’t involve Borders or Best Buy.”
So the Season for Giving is now also the Season for Wanting. Use the comments section to drop hints of varying degrees of subtlety about what you’d like me to buy you (or make for you, but you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment if you go that route, I’ll warn you now) for Christmas. (Or Hannukah, if you’re one of my Heeb friends, assuming I haven’t already missed that.) (Or, for that matter, whatever weird-ass thing the rest of you celebrate in December that makes Decent God-Fearing People such as myself have to resort to “Happy Holidays” while you kill Christmas.)
I have to warn you that I still don’t have a 100% accurate picture of who reads this blog, and I can’t guarantee that a comment will get you a gift. But you can’t win if you don’t play. Sample comments could be, “Your post about the new Mustang reminded me of this new set of stainless steel knitting needles that are really awesome,” or “I agree with you about ‘Arrested Development’ and would like to watch volumes 1 and 2 on DVD.” Amazon links are welcome.
It could be said that this just ruins the whole spirit of the thing completely, but think of it as your gift to me. People are always, okay frequently, giving me the perfect thing that I never would’ve thought to get myself and it turns out to be a very nice and thoughtful gift. And I don’t like to be reminded that that’s a talent I lack.