In 2017, this is how the holidays will work. Step one: You don’t put a moment’s thought into gifts in the days leading up to Christmas. Step two: On the morning of the 25th you spend 20 minutes frantically buying shit off Amazon and selecting “drone“ as your shipping method. Step three: The skies over America darken as Bezos’s flying monkeys whisk Applebee’s gift cards and The Hobbit Part 4: About the Author lunchboxes to your friends and family.
You’ll be prepared, though. For step one, at least, as totally forgetting to buy presents until the last last last last minute is a skill you’ve honed to a razor-sharp edge over pretty much your entire adult life. Unfortunately we still live in what will be darkly remembered as the The Droneless Years, which means that you have to somehow acquire said gifts before tomorrow morning. Hahaha—good luck with that, champ!
Here to help is our annual Holiday Survival Guide for Slackers, a handy compendium of for-real available items that you can purchase over the intarwebs right this very moment. And even though the future is not quite here, I’m sure your family’s inexhaustible supply of boring stories will fill your holidays with droning a-plenty.
“lol yep,” Claire posted to Facebook, linking to 23 Signs You’re Secretly An Introvert; “Plz read and share,” she wrote in reference to Dr Carmella’s Guide to Understanding Introverts; “so true” was her only comment on 7 Positives Only Introverts Would Understand. Maybe it’s time to just buy Claire her own personal submarine. It doesn’t have Wi-Fi, and $2 million is a small price to pay to rid your Facebook timeline of a self-diagnosed introvert who won’t shut the hell up.
The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. The scent of Derek Jeter. Your favorite sportsball enthusiast can embody two of the three when doused in Derek Jeter’s Driven Rush Eau De Toilette Spray. The cologne “provides a lasting impression and lingers whilesbestowing [sic] depth and richness,” says the website, which also describes Jeter as a “superstar athlete and role model for our generation.” I’m not sure from which generation the writers of that ad copy hail, but fingers crossed for octogenarians so we can move on to some more inspiring and better-smelling role models in the immediate future.
Renewable resources are all the rage these days, so pick up a vial of Portland Beard Oil for the environmentalist on your list. Each one-ounce bottle is harvested from the facial tresses of free-range PDX hipsters fed a strict and loudly advertised vegan diet, and is suitable for lubricating fixies or polishing a first edition In the Aeroplane Over the Sea vinyl LP.
He’s your best friend. His love for you is boundless. He’s your faithful companion through thick and thin. So why not ruin the one source of joy in his life with the Slo-Bowl Dog Feeder? Just pour his allotment of dry, tasteless kibble into this specialized receptacle and watch as his daily moment of unadulterated pleasure becomes a frustrating, time-consuming chore of data-entry caliber. If you are lucky it may take him upwards of a week to figure out that eating you would be quicker and more rewarding than having to deal with this monumental pain in the ass.
The 2008 Holiday Survival Guide for Slackers featured “Snuggie: The Blanket With Sleeves!” In 2010 they released the “Snuggie for Dogs.” And now they continue to move down the evolutionary tree with the Snuggie for Star Wars Fans, in the form of the Yoda Unisex Hooded Cotton Robe. (“Unisex” is Latin for “one sex,” the approximate amount your gift recipient will be getting while in possession of this item.) At least there now exists something dumber than Midi-chlorians.
The Ostrich Pillow not only allows the wearer to power nap anywhere, but it also corrects the evolutionary oversight of us not having gaping wounds on either side of our heads. What better way to tell that special someone that you prefer them unconscious with their entire head hidden from view?
FUN STORY: A decade ago I did some freelance work for a local board game company, and one of my assignments was for the “Bratz Fashion Party Fever Game.” You may remember Bratz as the line of dolls that looked like underage prostitutes with collagen injections; I spent one hellish weekend churning out flavor text for the cards, pitching everything for the four-to-eight-year-old-girl set with whom the toys were so disturbingly popular. I promptly and mercifully forgot all about the assignment the moment I was done, until a year or so later when I was given a complimentary copy of the game upon its release. Curiosity got the better of me as I was riding the bus home from the office of the game company, and I decided to see if any of my verbiage had been used on the cards. Unfortunately, the vehicle hit a bump just as I opened the package, and trading cards flew all over the bus as if shot from a T-shirt cannon. I then spent the next few minutes crawling up and down the aisle, frantically retrieving my collection of cards featuring hypersexualized tweens while passengers glanced down and then hastily looked away to avoid eye contact. Hey, thanks for dredging up that painful memory, Gift Guide! Anyway, Monster High Dolls craftily combines the body dysmorphic disorder of Bratz with the supernatural potpourri of Twilight into the perfect gift for a 30-year-old dude who enjoys debasing himself on the city bus.
Fuckin’ Cousin Richard, with his “master’s degree” and “New Yorker subscription” and “awareness of current events.” I bet he didn’t even watch the Bridalplasty DVD box set you gave him last year. It’s time to take that fancy-talking elitist down a peg with The Magic GIANT 12-Surface IQ Pentagon - Fantastic Edition. “Not so smart now, are you Dick?” you can mutter under your breath as he opens the present with what appears to be…genuine excitement and appreciation? Ughh! That guy!!
A book: Anyone Can Build a Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker. “We also sell the plucker fingers that you will need for this project,” I read on the website, before hastily closing my browser and deleting the cache in terror.
How do you find out if a Bitcoin is real? You bytecoin!!! Tell this joke at your next family gathering; anyone who guffaws is probably dumb enough to appreciate the gift of cryptocurrency. An entire economy built around a system of mumbo-jumbo and superstition, rooted in something that’s not even real? Why, that sounds like Christmas itself. Happy holidays!
