#7

The founding fathers, who had to walk to school uphill both ways through 6’ of snow during the winters, did not believe that any sane person would actually want to go shopping during December. It is for that reason when George Washington and his son George Washington Carver invented the mall parking lot, they only designed it with approximately 27 spaces in them just wide enough to park your horse in.

In addition to the lack of parking, the weather is kind of ridiculous. Odds are, you are dealing with cold wet snowy rainy blizzardy cloudy weather unless you are currently reading this from Brazil. I highly recommend as your Official Chimes Gift Guide person that you just go back to bed. Its just too cold, wait till June.

No Christmas for you this year.

#8

Relatives are the ideal giftees. Possibly because they are traditionally willing to forgive you for whatever tacky gift you may have bought. Wal-Mart was built upon gifts for relatives, but heaven help the young man that purchases his girlfriend’s gift from the commercial giant. He will suddenly find himself with a shorter list of people to shop for next year. (See also #11)

But the real benefit of shopping for relatives is the fact that you can have other relatives cover for you. As I once mentioned in a Mother’s day piece, I usually call up my sister, and discuss what would be best to get a given relative. Whatever she suggests is fine with me, I tell her that I’ll pay her back later, and then have her sign my name below hers on the card. But this year since I’ll be home for Christmas, I’ll probably sign my own name on the card, above hers so it looks like the whole card thing was my idea.

This rule only applies to relatives that didn’t spring from your own personal loins. If you do happen to be morally and physically responsible for their existence then rest assured, you cannot possibly make them happy no matter how much money you spend. Unless of course, you happen to package the gift in a large cardboard box. This will afford you approximately 45 minutes of Christmas afternoon nap time.

#10

After determining that you are not rich enough to purchase a diamond mine, nor sufficiently impoverished enough be the subject of an emotional Christmas song, we must take a long hard look at those on your list. We will start with the broad categories and then narrow it down.

First of all, are you related to the person on your list? This can be sometimes be difficult to determine, but it is a very important question and one that should be addressed especially in the midst of so much mistletoe and alcoholic eggnog. And physical resemblances (or the lack thereof) cannot always be trusted. But I’ve found that there is always one member of the family who can be counted on to know exactly how each member of the family is related to each of the other members. This person is your best bet. However, they don’t even just tell you if a specific person is your relative. They give you the entire genealogy of all of them and how they are connected all they back to Moses and Abraham. So in order to answer this question you should probably start in September.

If you would have to include them in the history of mental or other illness section of your medical history form (related), go to #8

If you are not related, go to #3

#11

Women are the whole reason that we even have to have a gift guide. In their defense, this is probably because they set the bar so high in several key Christmas gift buying categories; time spent thinking about it, time spent shopping, time spent wrapping. Men lead only in the “time spent forgetting that Christmas is in December this year” category.

There are 3 main things to remember in purchasing a gift for the females in your life.
1. Cost
2. Thoughtfulness
3. Decorativeness

You might be tricked into thinking that someone who spent all that time and effort in purchasing a gift would be understanding of those who try and fail, but apparently the opposite is true. Not only that but you have to factor in the conflicting ecosystem that is woman. For instance the differences between the way that they shop for themselves and the way that they shop for others. This is one of the conundrums about women. They like to brag about what a deal they got on their most recent purchase and how they found the same fashion accessory that they saw at a more expensive department store for $400.79 at Wal-Mart for only $.35. But if you have the choice between the two for a Christmas gift, go with the more expensive one every time. Not only will she know when you bought the cheaper one, but she let you know that she knows.

Also gift cards don’t work either. Sure they allow her the satisfaction and the thrill of the hunt that women look for in a good shopping experience. And they avoid the pitfalls of getting something that might be read into in the wrong way (like the blender in the movie The Father of the Bride). But they are missing ingredient #2 which is thoughtfulness. She spent weeks thinking about that sweatshirt with your favorite team logo that she bought you and the 45 seconds that you spent looking for something in the $10 range in the gift card rack at the grocery store isn’t going to cut it.

So the safest bet is a candle that matches a room in the house. Unbeknownst to many men, while they were watching The Game on tv, their wives went and decorated many of the rooms in the house with Themes. I once lived in my house for 2 years without realizing that my mom had an apple theme in the kitchen. To notice a woman’s theme is like asking if she lost weight. And to be able to make a purchase that compliments that theme, is even better. So when you add in the inexplicable costliness of candles, the noticing (i.e. thoughtfulness) of finding one that matches, and the raw decorativeness (uselessness) of a candle, you have the perfect gift.

Not counting diamonds of course. Shiny and expensive wins every time.

If You're Reading This Blog It Must Be Finals Week

I have some bad news, it seems that finals week has come once again. This is the annual event that comes just before times of great joy and freedom. Its kind of like the last mile in a marathon, only in this case the last mile is through a river of lava full of piranhas.

Much like a recession, the term “finals week” is kind of loosely defined. There are, however, a few methods for determining whether or not we have cause to panic. Take this simple quiz to find out if your school is currently in the middle of “finals week”

1. Go to your nearest school library. Stand in the middle and pull out your cell phone. Now proceed to call every single non-family member in your phonebook. If it really is finals week, you will hear the corresponding ring of 85% of your contact list coming from somewhere in the library.
2. Coffee prices at the local watering hole have gone up like gas on memorial day.
3. Your study group actually talks about the class for once.
4. Your syllabus says “Finals Week.”
5. You are so desperate for distraction that you start reading blogs.

Check and check. It may be finals week, but that’s no reason to get down. Finals week, much like puberty, is an important part of growing up. Sure, you’re going to want to burn every picture taken during this time of life, and you’re probably going to wind up with a nickname that you hope your children will never find out about. But just imagine a world without finals for a moment. A world where we can just forget about our responsibilities and where all your friends are always around. It would be the most wonderful place ever.

But the fact is, we don’t live in that magical world of make-believe. We live in a world that was built and forged by kids who not only took finals, but studied for them as well. Would we have such great inventions as the wheel, baseball, or chocolate if people hadn’t studied hard at college and aced their finals? I don’t know I didn’t bother to look them up.

I predict a future beyond our imaginations as a result of this year’s finals. A future with hover bikes, and entire towns dedicated to the study of the stars called “universe-cities.” But mostly I’m just waiting for new breakthroughs in robotic research in which scientists invent robots that will take my stupid finals for me.

The Site Meter Blues

Often times writers are thought of as lonely, insecure, losers who are too socially awkward to hold down jobs in occupations that require interaction with other human beings. While we may never know if that is true or not (the writers won’t look us in the eye to confirm or deny this), I think we can all agree that bloggers certainly do fit that description, except they are paler with vacant eyes and carpal tunnel caused by caffeine shakes.

All that to say that many bloggers long for approval and love. And it is that desperate cry for attention that was the reasoning behind the invention of the site meter. Site meters, the online equivalent of class president elections, are an accurate and unbiased way of measuring your worth as a human being. Some bloggers have millions of hits, or “love clicks,” a month registered on their site meters. While others such as myself just have one or two from their editor checking to see if the blog is still there.

My editor is always coming up with new ways to improve the blog. lately she has been on me to change the color. But to be honest that’s kind of like repainting your living room to get more guests to come to a home that nobody knows about. So I figured letting her put the site meter on would be a painless and work free change that would satisfy her.

Site meters are interesting in the aspect that they are kind of like reverse stalking. You can not only see how many people are viewing your page but also how long they were reading it, where they are from, and the referring page that brought them there.

For instance if you were to click on the site meter icon on the right at the bottom of this page you would notice around 110ish (at the time of this writing) hits. Once there you can look at the location of those hits and what they were doing online. For instance, visitor #102 is from Lexington, KY and they found the site because they googled the search words “seat belt chimes is gay.” Similarly visitor #109 googled the phrase “platypus car chimes.” In this manner we get visitors from all over the globe, like Kenya, China, and France accidentally arriving at this blog.

But what you don’t see a lot of is google searches for “best site in the world,” or “excellence in writing” or even “James Browning.” I did recently discover that my friend, CJ Casciotta found the page while googling his own name because of an article where I mentioned his concert.

While the site meter may at first appear to be interesting, the novelty soon wears off when you realize that nobody reads your blog and those that do aren’t doing it on purpose. It’s kind of like in Jr. High, when you somehow stumble across the diary of that person that you have a huge and potentially fatal crush on. You open it up and read only to find that they are not into you at all. Not only that but those times of interaction with you that meant so much… they just wanted to know more about platypus car chimes.

So even some may find all of this discouraging, I have learned to live with the knowledge that I personally know all 3 of my readers and that my mother isn't one of them. In a way this frees me up to do whatever I want, like make some of these links go to random places just because I know nobody is checking them.

This Year's Scroogies Nominations

The holidays now have us surrounded and it is clearly time to just give up and get our Christmas on. So what is the best way to promote the spirit of the season? By pointing out and judging those who aren’t. Kind of a “What would Santa do” approach.

So first of all, let’s take a look at Scrooge’s own industry; banking. The FDIC [Federal District In Charge of banks (kind of)] has recently finished a study in which they found that banks are targeting the young and the poor (i.e. college students). According to USA Today, “Large banks are more likely to process transactions from largest to smallest dollar amount, often triggering more fees.” The banks made nearly $17.5 billion in overdraft related fees last year. Do you know how many turkeys that could buy for Tiny Tim? Seven, probably.

But large faceless financial corporations are the only ones drinking spoiled eggnog this year. Large websites are getting a little cranky as well. Facebook recently deleted Lindsey Lohan’s account because they thought she was a fake. Fortunately Lindsey still had her Myspace to fall back on. But this brings some interesting existential questions. Just who is Facebook to decide who the REAL Lindsey is? Am I the real Lindsey Lohan? And can I be friends with Lindsey? And most importantly, does anyone other than indie bands still really use Myspace?

But worst of all would be a federal judge who recently said that releasing thousands of California prisoners may be the only way to alleviate the overcrowding which according to the inmates lawyer (Lex Luther), leads to “medical neglect and malfeasance.” What has happened to our penal system that our prisoners are suffering from malfeasance? What is malfeasance? Obviously we need to act quickly before this judge releases an army of super villains, apparently infected with malfeasance, into the population of California. And if we’ve learned anything from Batman, this can only mean trouble.

Fortunately not everyone has given up on the Christmas spirit. My neighbor recently installed a Christmas display so tacky it could be considered vandalism and when he asked me if I liked it, I heard little Cindy Lou Who’s voice inside me and I said, “Yes, it looks wonderful. I especially like the moving reindeer that has almost all of lights working.”

So if there is a lesson that we take away from all this, it would be that we should never judge someone based on their Facebook profile. And while maybe sending thousands of criminals home early for Christmas might seem like a good idea it almost always leads to a Legion of Super-Villains. Somebody should make that into a Christmas claymation special. But most of all we’ve learned that we should get our flu shots and wash our hands. Apparently malfeasance is really going around this year.


If you have anyone that you would like to nominate for the Scroogies this year, feel free to post your nomination and reason why in the comments suggestion below.