The Season Of Giving (And Getting)

My friend Ashley suggested that the topic this week be cheap homemade gifts people can make in order to save some dough. (I'll expand that to say feel free to talk about consumerism and Christmas in general if you want.)

As you all know, I am broke. I will probably be broke for the rest of my life. That's a choice I make. (Obviously I am not literally broke, since I am on a computer and not starving to death, but you know, perspective or somethings). So homemade gifts are something that appeal to me. Here's a few ideas for homemade gifts I have, and easy directions you can follow to make them yourself. Enjoy!

1 - Write a nice poem for the person to show you care about them - First, go to graduate school for poetry. Then, find a person you like and start to care about them. (These steps can be reversed). Then write a poem about them. In order to make it good, though, you have to complicate the issues and remove rhymes like "love, dove, glove" or "soul, hole, pole." Replace them with phrases like "a plant starves in winter," "Jupiter in the Heavens and the intricate map of asphalt on earth," or "I want to do it to your butt big time." Give poem to person. Actually, probably you shouldn't give poem to person. They will think you are totally weird and cheap. Unless you went the butt route. Then give the poem to person for sure.

2 - Bake a big double chocolate fudge cake - First, find a friend. Then, make sure his name is Glenn Shaheen. Then, find some recipe or something. Who am I, Emeril? Finally, give Glenn Shaheen the cake. You can leave now.

3 - Make a collage that isn't creepy - First, get a bunch of magazines. Make sure they are not Hustler, Penthouse, Jugs, Big Black Butts, Suffering Sapphotage!, Monster Cocks In Tiny Socks Quaterly, or *vagina: the journal of new experimental feminist pornography. Then, cut out some pictures that represent the relationship you share with the person. Try not to just cut out teeth or mouths or thumbs and glue them everywhere in the shape of stars. Then, paste the pieces onto a backdrop. If you are so broke you can't afford glue, try not to make a huge deal of how you used your saliva, tears, etc, to make the collage. Also, present the collage to the friend face to face. Don't nail it to their door, pet, or put it on their sleeping body in the middle of the night. Voila! Collage!

4 - Send an E-Card! - Just kidding. Don't fucking send an E-Card.

5 - Make some homemade jewelery - Perhaps you have 100 spoons like I do for some reason. Here's a great excuse to get rid of some of those spoons! First, get a small caliber pistol. Then, shoot holes in like 20 spoons. Try to hold them a little away from your face for safety. Then put a string or some other flexible slender thing through the spoons. There you have it! Christmas necklace! It's like the ear necklace in Universal Soldier. Remember that movie? (I really do have way too many spoons, though. I don't get it).

There you have it! Five cheap, homemade gift ideas from yours truly!

I only have one thing to say about Christmas and commercialism right now. I'm not a Christian, so the dereligiousing of Christmas doesn't bother me. On the other hand, I don't get upset when stores say Merry Christmas or whatever. But as you all know, my favorite holiday for candy's sake is Easter. They have Cadbury creme eggs, and the mini eggs too. And they hadn't infiltrated other holidays. But a couple of weeks ago Laurie (my girlfriend in Houston, not Laurie who posts here) came back from New York with some "Cadbury Ornament Eggs." We thought they might be minty on the inside, because that's Christmassy, but when we bit into them they were just regular Cadbury Creme Eggs. As much as I love those eggs, I was a little disappointed that they had made the leap. And they didn't even change the design of them at all! I mean, eggs? At Christmas? Easter is the thinly veiled pagan fertility festival. Christmas has nothing to do with eggs and fertility. Christmas is the thinly veiled pagan solstice festival.

Oh well, I'll still buy and eat them.