Internet Christmas shopping
It’s raining. You know, rain would be very nice, welcome, etc, if it would come, do its job of watering things–and please note that flooding is widely considered superfluidous–and then go away again. But no, that would be too obvious. So it’s been raining all day, and the question is only whether I want to walk hellhounds in daylight and the rain, or dark and the rain. Or both. Not forgetting the rain. We went for both. Variety is always good* although in this case the variety devoutly to be wished would have been the not raining option. I know, I know, I’m always complaining**, and if it’s raining then it’s not freezing*** and I don’t have to bring the jungle in every night and take it out again every morning. True. I’ve had a night off. But I wish to point out (aggrievedly) that it’s been raining all day and I’m going to have to bring the jungle in tonight because it stopped raining 4.25 seconds after hellhounds and I came indoors again after our final walk and it’s going to freeze again tonight so I get to bring a wet muddy dripping jungle into my sitting room. Not to mention the likelihood of risking life and limb on my ice-slicked hill when I bolt to the bell tower tomorrow morning.
So this evening I’ve been cruising, sullenly. I’m doubly sullen because I’ve put off ordering Those Last Few Difficult Christmas Presents so late that the things I’d decided to go ahead with in several crucial cases have sold out.† However all is not lost . . . chiefly because anyone on my gift list is already used to getting things late.
Chiquitar–she of the black crystal-studded rose–posted this in TALK:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/b3e7/
Which is in itself excellent, but while I was there, you know, I had a cruise:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/6f59/zoom/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/6f59/back/
I realise I’m supposed to be thinking about presents for other people, but as a (comparatively) new member of the short-haired clothing wearers group, apparel with significant backs as well as fronts is equally newly interesting to me. Many, many years ago I was visiting a friend in Seattle and bought a t shirt with the slogan–since famous, but cutting edge at the time–Eat dessert first, life is uncertain. The drawback was that it said this on the back which in those days would have been entirely covered by my hair. On the front was merely the name of the restaurant. Hmmph. I bought it anyway, took it home, and cut out the neck, so I could wear it back to front. And I did, for many happy years, till it disintegrated. I had spent all of those years saying to myself, I really have to do something about the neck before it unravels, and in fact it was the shoulder seams that gave out first. Thus is sloth rewarded.
And this made me snort gravy, since I was eating dinner at the time, but then I don’t get out much, haven’t seen it before, and it is one of the approximately two computer jokes I understand:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/5b3a/zoom/
Now two of my favourite catalogues for off the wall stuff that costs enough that it makes you look like you’re trying. Bonkers–possibly dangerously so–but trying. I find this category of gift-shaped objects extremely useful either for people I haven’t got a clue about . . . or people I know altogether too well who I may conceivably need to . . . let’s not say pay back . . . let’s say engage in kind with.
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/index.jsp : The title tells you you’re in shameless marketing heaven, which is restful, in England, where the truly polite clerk wishes you to believe that s/he is sad and embarrassed to be taking your money off you for this mere soulless merchandise. Furthermore, when you order from I WANT ONE OF THOSE†† , the box arrives emblazoned IWOOT, which is worth a bit of extra time and money and catalogue-leafing right there.
I would be dangerous with one of these. I would walk into traffic and dogs and wheelchairs and plop down four feet into excavations††† under one of these. I’ve also never seen one in use, which makes me wonder if possibly my disability is perceived as general to the population. However this may be the year I have to give one of these to someone (as I write this they’re still in stock) because what I was going to give them was already sold out:
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/twilight-umbrellas/index.html
And then there are the racing grannies. I have loved these since they first emerged from the darkness of some twisted games-inventor’s mind‡. This is exactly the sort of little old lady I want to grow up to be: mean to the end. And I salute their tacky plastic indomitability. And then some time this last year one of the Guardian’s regular columnists got her knickers in a twist over the racing grannies and wrote an essay full of outrage at this disrespect for the old.‡‡ What?
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/kitsch-daft/racing-grannies/index.html
Time, success, and twisted inventors move on however, and I hadn’t seen this development before:
http://www.totally-funky.co.uk/pages/funky/productView.asp?ID=2147&SID=1015
And, while we’re hanging around this site, speaking of geek, I wish I didn’t have a perfectly good hub already:
http://www.totally-funky.co.uk/pages/funky/productView.asp?ID=2267&SID=1070
My only question is, does it make that way cool whooping noise?
My other favourite site/catalogue of the somewhat expensive but exceedingly goofy is Pedlars http://www.pedlars.co.uk/
For that tool collector who has everything and/or that bloke who is impossible to buy for (which seems to be at least half the husbands/boyfriends/male partners described on this blog and possibly a few girlfriends too):
http://www.pedlars.co.uk/page_1972.html
And I am a sick, cruel person but I’ve given a couple of these away already:
http://www.pedlars.co.uk/page_1517.html
Although they’re now almost as generally available as the grannies and I daresay the initial horror has worn off. Even so.
And these, like the umbrella, I’m still trying to decide who to give to, but one of these years I’ll think of someone (maybe I should lay in a pair so I can have a smooth conceptual arc of Eureka! + wrapping paper):
http://www.pedlars.co.uk/page_1366.html
And just by the way, did you know you could still buy a SLINKY? . . . oh dreadful nostalgia. There’s something hypnotic about watching one of these lollop thoughtfully downstairs. (Is it only depth of tread/height of riser that make some stairs a doddle and some stairs a technical struggle on a par with faster than light travel/convincing hellhounds not to throw themselves on everyone they see?)
http://www.geniegadgets.com/gadgets_uk/slinky.html
The only thing left is to give you links to Silly Putty and lava lamps, so I think I’ll stop here and go torture a Christmas carol or start ferrying in the jungle or something.
* * *
* Okay, almost always. Chocolate chip cookies are only good when they contain chocolate chips.
** speaking of always
*** probably
† I am also, just by the way, not going to post a couple of my favourite gift sites, because several people on my Christmas list read this blog.
†† And I want it now
††† THEY’RE DIGGING UP THE ROAD AGAIN. You may, or then again you may not, remember my snarls and fulminations last summer when three out of every four roads in this town–including all ways out of this town–were being dug up. This was especially acute in one or two locations, including the main road at the foot of my little cul de sac, in part because there’s someone renovating^ almost opposite the mouth of my road, which means there’s always a builder or two or three or twelve parked on the street. We’re going to need a helicopter to get in and out and at least one of those emergency rope ladders.
^ and renovating, and renovating, and renovating, but I saw it when it was for sale, and it was maybe a little beyond the hand pump in the kitchen for your running water and the candle sconces in the walls for your lighting, but not a lot beyond, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they found sabertooth tiger bones in the bottom of the fire-pit.
‡ Hip hip hooray
‡‡ I’ve just been trying to find it. The Guardian’s ‘search’ is usually pretty good. Not tonight though. But the right-hand column of adverts is crammed with web sites who would like to sell me some racing grannies. Hee.
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