Tag Archives: Suggested Gifts For Me

List of urgent requests – please help

1. Editing and proofreading clients

2. $80,000 for graduate school

3. Newlywed couples in Charlottesville to profile in newspaper

4. A cheap place to live in New York City

5. A lawnmower that runs on good intentions

6. A face-to-face with Edward P. Jones, my current monomythical Hero-Author

Being behind on the internet but on top of my personal life

The worst thing about being a blogger is that the internet keeps going even when you’re too lazy or busy to check on it. At any given moment bloggers feel pressured to know exactly what the internet is doing, who the internet hooked up with the night before, what the internet ate for breakfast, etc. It’s exhausting. And if days go by without tracking every internet hiccup or virtual bowel movement, you feel like you’re a bad blogger. You’ll never catch up with all the action. There are too many missing links.

That’s why I’m going to take one more day to focus purely on me, myself, and my personal life – subjects that will always be fresh and exciting to us all. Namely, I’m recently engaged to be married to the bbf (blogging boyfriend). Or is he now the bfh (blogging future husband)? Or perhaps the bbr (blogger with buyer’s remorse)?

But hold your gift baskets! Recork the Cristal! Cancel your order for the matching china set from the Pottery Barn! We are determined to do this as minimally as possible. You can just send cash or check to my PO box.

In the coming months I will discover what engagements and weddings are all about. I will finish reading Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I will send all my two dozen bridesmaids to the spa to get Botoxed at their own expense. I will coach my uppity flower girl to act less adorable so she won’t eclipse me on my special day. I will sample frosted layer cakes and brag to you about how delicious they are. Finally, I will admit to the bbf that I’m not actually pregnant with triplets or going to war but unfortunately he can’t revoke the proposal because the wheels are already in motion.

I am the prettiest princess! It’s me! In your FACE, less pretty princesses!

Strange coincidence, or the universe telling me I should kill a cheerleader?

I am surprised that my 300th blog post slipped by without anyone sending me chocolates or balloons. But I am equally, if not more, surprised that I unintentionally wrote my 300th blog post (according to my blog stats) about R.L. Stine writing 300 novels. Spooky, huh? What if this whole blog has been the first chapter of a horror novel? It only took us 300 pages to figure out something is hideously wrong.

I want to go on a Disney cruise!

1) All-you-can-eat buffet

2) Cute fat kids

3) Not having to fly in an airplane

4) Sleeping

5) Reading

6) Swimming

7) Grown people dressed up like animals

8 ) Sex that seems inappropriate and wrong

Holiday Gifting Guide Part 1

1) If you live in Charlottesville, I suggest that you attend the Robot Wares & Record Fair at the Satellite Ballroom on Sunday, December 2nd. These girl and boy vendors sell their original crafts and artwork at low prices and all the money earned stays in the local economy. Some of it goes to poor, indie-rock babies in need of new ironic t-shirts.

2) If your friends and family don’t say things like, “It’s not a real gift if it didn’t cost you anything,” then visit this website for simple giving ideas.

3) Etsy.com. Here is the site where you can buy handmade, one-of-a-kind gifts from artisans all over American. It’s somewhat overwhelming to navigate the millions of products, so expect to spend an hour or so browsing. You can find some cool stuff. I liked these napkins and these pot holders for instance. Unfortunately I already own napkins and potholders. My friend Diana sells her original jewelry on the site, and she’ll have a small presence at the Satellite’s Record Fair as well.

4) If your friends and family don’t say things like, “A can of live worms does not constitute a Christmas present,” then visit the OxFam online store and buy someone a goat.

5) Soon the Perfect Flavor customized ice cream store in Waynesboro will be open. Get your dry ice ready! Lynsie’s ice cream is made with all local, organic ingredients. No eels.

6) Another indie shopping site.

7) The EWG gift bag.

8 ) Attend the “Second Annual Holiday Home Show” with Little Tree Press, By Cary, and eight other talented local artists.

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9) It’s always a good idea to pay off someone else’s credit card bill. Especially when it’s mine.

10) I think websites make good gifts. If you are tech savvy, you can buy someone a URL and then install a WordPress blog for him or her. Maybe a Mimbo! I am trying to buy a URL for my little brother so he can start his thermal underpants company, but every URL he picked was already a porn site.

11) A year’s supply of toilet paper. Is anyone else sick of buying toilet paper? Is there an alternative? The toilet paper shopping never ends.

I am running out of ideas. Let’s make this Part 1 of the Holiday Gifting Guide.  Please write with suggestions or self promotion.

Charitable Christmas gift

The Environmental Working Group is offering a superior gift bag equipped with a chemical-free water bottle and a cast iron pan for a charitable donation of $135. Get the bags while supplies last.

PS Did anyone else hear that Toys “R” Us accidentally printed an ad for Aqua Dots in their annual Christmas newspaper insert?

My most boring Christmas wish list ever

1) a composter

2) more URLs for me to dominate

3) magazine subscriptions

4) organic sheets

5) donations to charity

The Satellite Ballroom’s Robot Wares & Record Fair

I am thrilled to announce the return of the Satellite Ballroom’s most outstanding event of the year (after, of course, last week’s Slightly Stoopid show):

THE ROBOT WARES & RECORD FAIR!

For those of you with superior taste who have lived in Charlottesville for a couple years, you may remember this as THE shopping and music event of the holiday season. Last year I bought homemade manatee stationary while listening to Sarah White and drinking mimosas. Patrick Critzer sold curry, Thomas Dean sold silk-screened t-shirts, Junkyardoll sold vintage clothes, and a good time was had by all. I hope that everyone comes out to the Satellite Ballroom this year to support Charlottesville’s best vendors, craftspersons, and artists. I swear to blog that you will end up finding some kickass Christmas presents there.

The fair is on the afternoon of December 2nd. Let me know if you want to help organize or publicize the event, or if you need information on how to reserve your own table and make tons of cash money.

A list of requests for my gentlemen callers

Dear gentlemen callers,

I have already established that I don’t want chocolate bouquets, but I think you deserve a more extensive list of acceptable tokens with which to express your feelings.

1. Mix CDs. Here is your chance to make me think of you every time I sing in my car. Selvi gave me a mix CD for my birthday, and I would marry her right now if I were a handsome Indian doctor.

2. Paper towels, organic milk, broccoli, hand soap, frozen pizzas, crackers. You know I hate going to the grocery store.

3. Gift certificates to fancy restaurants. This way I don’t actually have to eat with you to get a free meal.

4. Here is something I don’t want – diamonds. Yes, I’ve seen the commercials, and I found them really touching until I got on the meds that kicked most of my crying jags, but I don’t buy into diamond culture. Don’t get me wrong – I buy into gentlemen spending two months’ salary on me, just not on diamonds. The diamond cartel and its ad campaigns have been plugging away since the 1930s, telling us that their immortal product is a girl’s best friend. It’s not true. Diamonds are pretty, but they’re sold by scam artists. Edward Jay Epstein is one of the most eloquent voices of the anti-diamond movement (after me, of course). He wrote this piece in The Atlantic that delves into the trade.

The diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance. To achieve this goal, De Beers had to control demand as well as supply. Both women and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life. To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment that would inhibit the public from ever reselling them. The illusion had to be created that diamonds were forever — “forever” in the sense that they should never be resold.

Lots of other folks have written on the subject. From Meghan O’Rourke’s “The Trouble with Engagement Rings“:

In 1919, De Beers experienced a drop in diamond sales that lasted for two decades. So in the 1930s it turned to the firm N.W. Ayer to devise a national advertising campaign—still relatively rare at the time—to promote its diamonds. Ayer convinced Hollywood actresses to wear diamond rings in public, and…encouraged fashion designers to discuss the new “trend” toward diamond rings. Between 1938 and 1941, diamond sales went up 55 percent.

Lastly, so you know that this post is just an excuse to sermonize, an interview with Janine Roberts, author of Glitter and Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel.

Eighty years ago, your great grandparents didn’t do this when they got married. They gave each other big wooden boxes and simple things like promise rings and hope chests. The allure of diamonds is part of a huge, century-long conspiracy by the diamond industry, namely giant De Beers, which controls stockpiles and sets the price of stones, which aren’t the rarest in nature, even though they’re the most expensive.

I am hoping that the word “conspiracy” will increase traffic to my blog.

5. Gentlemen callers, just give me the cash that you would have spent on a diamond.

6. I’m also fresh out of toilet paper.